Hello, writers. It was over 100 here today, and quite likely where you are too. But apparently this has nothing to do with global warming. Just as the heat wave that killed an estimated 11,000 people in Moscow last summer had nothing to do with global warming. I’m sure the drought in eastern Africa has nothing do with global warming. Nothing has anything to do with global warming.
/fume
Anyway. Since it’s so bloody hot, let’s write about cold.
Let’s describe it. But first, let me get a couple things off my chest about descriptions.
In the 19th century, books used to open with two-page descriptions. Four page descriptions. Heck, eight page descriptions. That was cool. The reader wasn’t about to toss the thing aside and switch on The Daily Show or go check his email.
Nowadays you’re lucky if you can get away with a paragraph of description, and it had better be a short paragraph. And if it’s the opening paragraph it had better include a dead body and/or a gun pointing at the protagonist.
And here’s something I didn’t learn till I had an editor watching over me: be careful with those metaphors and similes. Use them sparingly, make them good, and make them closely enough related to the action that they don’t distract the reader from it. If you’re writing about an icy February day in Chicago and you say it was as cold as Point Barrow, then you’re drawing the reader out of the spell you’re trying to weave. You’re trying to create Chicago in the reader’s mind, and instead you’ve sent her mind zooming off to the North Slope Borough.
(You may want to do that. Just don’t do it accidentally.)
So, metaphors: make them a propos, make them clever if you like, but keep them reasonably contextual.
Tonight’s challenge—describe cold. Make us feel it. The cold can be anywhere you like—a Himalayan mountaintop, a downtown doorway at midnight, a walk-in freezer in Mumbai. A dungeon a callow youth has been locked in after trying to steal the Jewel of Togwogmagog.
You can write a paragraph of straight description if you like. But there are other ways to describe—dialogue tags, gestures and small actions, big actions. Instead of a traditional static description, you can have characters moving through your description.
The cold can even be metaphorical if you want—a cold character, a cold choice.
Write On! will be a regular weekly diary (Thurs 8 pm ET) until it isn't.
Before signing a contract with any agent or publisher, please be sure to check them out on Preditors and Editors, Absolute Write and/or Writer Beware.