In A Note Of Technique, by Wallace Stegner, he helps explain how to set up a story for beginning writers. Most of the things that he talks about are about how to set up a story using his techniques. All of these techniques were very helpful for someone who is new to writing and also completely clueless to it. One important thing he mentions is to “start in the middle of things; begin in motion.” By this, he means that you should start with the action of the story, not a bunch of boring and melodramatic stuff. Another important thing he talks about is “Never explain too much; a reader is offended if he cannot participate and use his mind and imagination, and a story loses much of its suspense the moment everything is explained.” This means that you should not go into depth about something you are describing, giving the reader an imagination to think by themselves. He also goes on to say that it is insulting to the reader if you don’t give them a little bit of freedom to imaginate what’s going on by themselves. A final great point he made was ““Said” is a colorless word that disappears; elegant variations show up.” This means that using the word “said” after dialouges is boring and dull, and that there’s different words you can use to replace the word “said”.
The author’s tone of explanation seems to be one of authority and wisdom. He explains things highly in depth and very professionally. He uses lots and lots of detail in what his techniques are. He doesn’t fail to use big and long words, and he makes sure he does it in a way that is still understandable. He makes a few funny nods and jokes here and there which definitely gives more life to what he is talking about.
The two advice points I would use for my own writing are two that I mentioned earlier (those being explaining too much in detail and also using said too much) because those are the two that stood out the most to me. Explaining too much is something that I do a lot in my stories -- usually when it comes to describing something. For example, in one of the stories I wrote, I talked about how I packed a suitcase and I described every. single. thing. that I had put in it. It got very long and very tedious to read through. I think I would also use the “said is colorless” piece of advice because I do that a lot in my writing and I always feel the same way when I have to write a set of dialogue. I’ve written a fair share of stories, and the trend that I have is that I use the word “said” a LOT. There is never any other good replacements for me to use so I use that as my placeholder and then it gets repetitive and annoying after a long while. I personally feel that I’ve gained some useful tips to remember after reading through this book full of helpful knowledge.
Comments