WHAT A WRITER DOES

1) WRITES WHAT NO ONE ELSE CAN

It is not just night.  No.  

There are two full moons tonight.  

Their reflections stare balefully from the open eyes of your mother-in-law sitting in your front porch swing ... 

the mother-in-law you buried three days ago.


2) SERVES THE READER NOT THE WRITER

The reader doesn't turn the pages because of the need to applaud you.  The reader turns them to find out what happens next.


3) ASKS THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS

 “What am I trying to say? 

What words will express it? 

What image or idiom will make it clearer? 

Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?


4) WRITING IS LIKE USING MAGIC

You write the words, and they altered the perceived universe. 

By merely writing you could create damage and pain, 

cause tears to fall, drive people away, make yourself feel better, make your life worse.

 Good writing strives to explain, to make things a little bit clearer, to make sense of our world.

 A writer always tries to be part of the solution, to understand a little about life and to pass this on.


5) TELLS A FULL STORY

 There’s a name for something with a single point of view: 

It’s called a press release.

 Incorporate multiple perspectives even if you are writing in 1st Person POV.  

Your heroine must struggle in a world that cares about its own agenda not hers.


6.) SINGS A WORLD INTO BEING

Talented writing makes things happen in the reader’s mind:

 vividly, forcefully 

 that good writing, which stops with clarity and logic, doesn’t.


7.) IS SUBTLE

 We have to allow the sunken meanings to remain sunken, suggested, not stated.

The most horrifying monsters are the ones never quite seen.

A cop shoots a drug addict in self-defense.  Simple scene read a dozen times.  

The addict whimpers as he lays dying.  "I'm going.  I'm going.  I'm ... afraid."

The cop holsters his gun, cradles the youngster, and whispers in his ear:

"Sshh,  It is just a bad dream, a bad dream.  Go back to sleep." 

The addict dies.  The cop gets up, sighs, and leaves a bit of his soul by the still-warm corpse.
***
Hope this helps 

{Many thanks to Imani (Rehema) for this video}