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This was made for aspiring writers by an aspiring writer, these are little hints that I've discovered along my writing journey.
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Monday, March 21, 2011

The Ugly Details

When describing something don't bore your reader with details.  If you're unsure whether it's boring or not get the opinions of friends.  Don't ask them specifically if it was boring or not but have them speak their mind about it and not hold back anything for the sake of your feelings and make sure to take it patiently on your part.  You need critisism, for the most part people are only trying to help imporve your work, not cut it down.

Decide if you even need certain details at all; read the following paragraph for an example.

Jaquline or Jacky for short, tossed her long blond wavy hair out of her face that the wind simply blew back in to her blue eyes.  She looked down at her grass stained sneakers and shoved her hands deep into her denim jean pockets.

Now I might have over done that a little bit, but you as a new writer may find it very easy to do and it sounds really good while you're doing it so make sure to go over your work often to check for things like this.  You might take out "short for Jacky" and simply have a friend call her that in a conversation at a later time.  You could also remove unnecessary things like "denim jeans," "blue eyes," "blond hair," things like that.  Unless for some reason the reader has to know what the character looks like for some reason you can usually leave it up to the reader to imagine your characters.

Don't get me wrong, details are very important and essential for good story telling and there are certain times when you SHOULD go into lots of details just make sure you don't over do it.

I hate to admit this as much as I love the book but if you read the old version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea this is a good example of a bad example of what I'm talking about.  It seems like half the book is describing the names of fish and their subspecies, etc. etc.  Now I know some people like these things but not everyone so try and leave the unneeded details out.

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