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Saturday, November 28, 2009

how to write a story (part three)

Find the right word. This is the hard part. Sometimes when I'm writing my first draft I'll skip this part because I can easily get hung up on finding the exact write word. I'll write in parentheses after the word (or perhaps the entire sentence) 'bw' for better word which tells me that altho the word I've used is close to what I mean it isn't exactly what I mean and there is a much better word out there. I've just got to find it. An example that comes to mind is in book two of my trilogy, The God Chronicles, when my party comes to the ancient city of Tirich Mir, which means Sunn's wrath. I wanted to describe a city that had been destroyed by the wrath of a God (not the God, because in this tale God's hand is a gentle one). It took a while but this is what I came up with:

 Great dark mounds rose from the broken earth, clotting the landscape, obscuring a view that was once pleasant but now was now ruinous. Gaping trenches scored the ground, clods of black dirt mushrooming up only to be smothered by sod. In the dimming light they could see what little remained; fragments of buildings and walls, ruptured foundations, shards of bone, glass that winked, cobbles scattered like paper, and over it all the dampened red light hung, so that it looked like a place still burning.

I think I painted a pretty good picture of the place. But hey, you be the judge.

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