I have this bad habit of over-thinking stuff when I am trying to sleep. Which I did last night. But you know what they say, all dark clouds have a silver lining! Because, it’s during the night I have what my friend calls “magic hour.” I just burst with ideas and I sometimes end up fueling my friends spinn-off comic strip.
This Eureka-moment of mine revolves around my own inability to recognize when I write really well. My best writing comes when I’m just writing, not when I’m trying to write good, which I normally do. Sounds like a contradiction, but I really couldn’t see it until someone pointed it out to me and I’m like; Wow, she/he is right! This is good!
But last night I laid thinking about this, I thought it was stupid that I couldn’t recognize my own good writing, and went through some of the pieces in my mind that people have praised me for. And then it hit me! I recognized what made them good!
Let me show you with this extract from my novel, The Battle of Urno.
The more Mira thinks about fighting Zoariack, the more her stomach hurts. She spends her first day in Glamingfalls waiting for the other girls by walking anxiously and restless back and forth in the village.
Don’t seem like much does it? But look at what it tells you as a reader;
1. What Mira is thinking about (fighting)
2. The problem at hand(Zoariack)
3. Her emotions(anxiety and restlessness)
4. What her emotions makes her feel physically(stomach pain)
5. What she is doing(walking around and waiting)
That’s a whole lot of information in just those two simple sentences. It even reminds the reader where she is, how long she has been there and who she is waiting for! It’s a nice opening of a chapter, pretty much summing up the previous chapter in just two sentences.
Here is another extract from the same novel, can you believe I was intending to edit this away?
“It’s their fault!” He gasps in horror. “They made me drop it!”
Zoariack doesn’t pull a mine at all as Rain continues to plead, clinging to his master’s feet.
This is such a great character description of Rain. Exactly the kind of person I want him to be!
What does this tell the reader?
1. His emotions(horror, fear)
2. His actions(clinging, pleading)
3. His relationship to Zoariack(master)
4. Who’s at fault for the broken item(the girls)
This last point is particularly interesting since it was in fact Rain who broke it(and no, it’s not a vase, lol!), which also gives a good peek into what kind of person Rain is.
So what is it that makes these two extracts good? That is what my eureka-moment was all about after all. Well, lying in bed last night I realized it’s the combination of information I’m giving the reader. I’m combining different dimensions of a person into one; thoughts, physical state, emotions, personality traits and their location.
theivorypen 