Tea (and writing workshop) for two
My daughter Kristen and I had a writers' workshop of two at Cafe Latte this afternoon. Although I'm rarely privileged to read her work, I've glimpsed enough to know that Kristen at 15 far surpasses her mother's talent at that age. Happily replete with chocolate cake, we started a list of literary sins and cliches to avoid:
- Character repeatedly getting knocked out to end a scene or chapter.
- Character looking in mirror to describe self.
- More than one character with an unusual eye color.
- Eyes that "flash" or change color to signify emotions.
- Characters who tell each other things they already know.
- Improbable coincidences that get the main character out of predicaments.
- A different word in place of "said" every time.
- Plots that depend upon the characters never having the sense to compare notes or tell each other things.
- A doorway to certain death. Or a bottomless pit.
- Always specifying how people say things. Sadly, furiously, softly...in fact, most -ly words need to be stomped before they can breed.
Next we tackled some writing exercises aimed at improving our character descriptions. The challenge was to describe a character without using any detail that would be evident in a photograph, i.e. no eye color, hair color, height, shape of face, etc. I came up with these:
1.
Kenny had the soul of a show-off without the skill. Once he rode his bike no-handed past Peggy Urbanski, the fifth-grade beauty, smack into the nearest lamppost. He entered the school talent contest every year only to sing off-key. In class his hand was the first to shoot into the air when the teacher asked a question, but nine times out of ten his answers were wrong.
2.
Callie Parker was a great beauty trapped in the body of a horse-faced spinster. She acted as though she saw Marilyn Monroe in the mirror every morning (the truth was closer to Olive Oyl) and dressed as though she actually had cleavage, a discernible waist, and legs someone would want to see. She strutted into parties with an air of arrogant confidence, favoring the best-looking men in the room with a look that forgave them for being speechless at the sight of her. It was startling how well this worked.
3.
Ellen, an English professor's daughter, reached for the Bard in times of stress the way some women reach for Godiva chocolates.
While I don't kid myself that any of these examples are deathless prose--I rarely write well under time pressure--both Kristen and I agreed that the exercise forced us to go deeper into our characters than a simple physical description.
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
wordswoman) wrote,
