Activity

Hello all Parimis!

Apparently I got confused at some point and your guildmaster…has not returned yet (she’ll probably be back tomorrow), so I thought I’d whip up a quick lesson for this week in her stead. (Actually, I’m cheating and I’m reusing a lesson I’ve used in my own guild–Meraki–because it also fits with your theme of pacing and suspense.)

 

This week, I’m going to take a look at what the small details and wording in your sentences can do to change the emotion and the feel of the scene. It’s fairly short and straight forward.

Even the most simple little words can change the feeling and emotion in a sentence, and we need to make sure we’re making use of those simple tricks. Vivid and specific words can do so much to strengthen your prose and really breathe life into it.

 

Consider these two examples:

The apartment door interrupts my shadow right in front of me, the scanner glowing a soft blue and waiting for my handprint.

 

The apartment door looms up and interrupts my shadow with its dusty grey surface. The scanner’s piercing blue glares out at me, silently demanding my handprint.

The second sentence has a much stronger emotion to it. Fearful. Demanding. And the main things that connotate that are the phrases: ‘looms up’, ‘piercing blue glares out’, and ‘silently demanding’. Just with those three wording changes, the tone of the scene is effected radically and can be that much clearer in the emotion and tension.

glowing vs glaring, and waiting vs demanding makes such a big difference.

That’s what we want in every scene that we write. To have the emotion clear. To draw the readers into the story with our every word choice. You can set up an amazing amount of suspense just by a simple word choice.

 

Have a go! Write two sentences: In the first sentence describe something with a happy/cheerful tone, and in the second sentence, describe the same thing again, but make it scary/suspenseful. See how big a difference your choice of words can make.

 

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