Write Unique Prose, Not Generic, OK?
Employ specificity, surprise and variation
Level 1
Show specific action to illustrate characters’ personalities
Rather than simply telling us your character is well-off, show her giving a cabbie a big tip, wearing cashmere, going to the hunt club, displaying photos of her big yacht on the wall, drinking 500 dollar bottle of wine, or something along those lines. Each detail tells us more about just what kind of well-off she is — generous, classy, status oriented, ruined by hedonistic privilege, or whatever. Still, who cares? Those examples are predictable, boring and generic.
Level 2
Show body language to help us get to know that characters
That’s just a start. What does her posture look like when she bends to the cabbie or posts while riding English style? Does she throw and break the wine bottle after drinking and ask a servant to clean it up or does she gently put it in the recycling bin? Does the yacht have a memorable name that tells us about her personality? Does the cashmere have stains on it because she inherited it but doesn’t care about physical things? That’s better. She’s starting to feel real. . . Ish.
Level 3
Use illuminated prose
Still, if you describe those things with generic language, who cares? “She bent low to give the cabbie a hefty tip.” “She dashed the bottle against the mantle.” “She sat rigidly on her horse, and when it began trotting, her posting style was conventional.” “The photo of her yacht, the Mother O’ Mine, was framed on her wall above the bathtub.” Meh. I don’t feel excited by life when reading those, or like I’m glimpsing someone’s life that I can’t wait to learn more about. I don’t feel the writer is communicating with me with style and panache. The moments described feel like I’m being told about something distant from me that doesn’t really matter.
How can you keep sentences from being blah? “She bent low to give the cabbie a hefty tip.” What’s a good strategy to make it more vivid? What’s phrase that means bent low that tells us more about her? Bow. That would give us the intriguing question of whether she is sincerely honoring the driver, and if so, what is her world-view? “She bowed to give. . .” What’s a word that tells us how she gave? Note that I’m not looking primarily for adverbs to tell how she bent or gave, but for substitute words. Present. Nah. Donate. Interesting. That adds more to the sense of it being a gift that honors the driver. Let’s go with that.
“She bowed to donate $200 crumpled, smelly dollars to the cabbie.” We want to see how the driver reacts, and if he’s a very minor character, we don’t need another sentence for his reaction. So, we could describe his reaction. He’s most likely startled, but we’re not going to use that generic word that tells rather than shows, are we? A gaping mouth is not the way to show it, as that’s so over-used it doesn’t seem real.
He could blink. I like that. But only if I see his appearance more clearly. “She bowed to donate $200 crumpled, smelly dollars to the cabbie, who blinked his warty eyelids.”
“She dashed the bottle against the mantle.” These are all random sentences I wrote for this article, so I don’t have any more context than you do. . . But I know that I’m going to vicariously enjoy this more if it’s some drink that will make my mouth water. And what other senses can be involved? “She dashed the bottle of ginger liqueur against the mantle, jamming her hands against her ears when the glass sprayed against the chrome floor.” Now the setting is unusual and loud. Note that since I use two adjectives, I don’t use any more, such as to describe the bottle, because too many modifiers becomes awkward.
“She sat rigidly on her horse, and when it began trotting; her posting style was conventional.” Well, la di da. Just like every other English style rider. What’s unique about her? “She pursed her wrinkled, pale lips as she sat like a stump on her horse, and when it began trotting, her posting style never wavered other than when she hummed and pointed hesitantly at the sky.” Now we have questions about her and she’s a window to a colorful world.
“The photo of her yacht, the Mother O’ Mine, was framed on her wall above the bathtub.” How can we use an active verb instead of passive, even though the photo is just resting there? “The mildew on the framed photo of her yacht, the Mother O’Mine, hugged the slippery wall above the bathtub. Black knobby-knucked fingers of mold splayed out above the wood.” That indicates more about the lifestyle of the character and creates an uneasy, foreshadowing something messy to come along.
Level 4
Consider the dynamics between the sentences
In all these cases, the narrator’s mind seems increasingly richer than before, but let’s look beyond each sentence. The way sentences in a paragraph are put together show the dynamics of the narrator’s mind. They can be mundane, one sentence following another in the most obvious way. Or, there can be something startling between them like unexpected leaps, ironic transitional phrases, or playful motifs that become developed through an umbrella metaphor.
“She bowed to donate $200 crumpled, smelly dollars to the cabbie, who blinked his warty eyelids.” How can we continue the story but veer off in an unforeseen direction? We could make a statement that is different from what the reader would naturally think. “No one should have to live with monster-lids. At least not when reincarnated following a lifetime of as a service dog.”
“She dashed the bottle of ginger liqueur against the mantle, jamming her hands against her ears when the glass sprayed against the chrome floor.” How can we make her reaction to her actions something we wouldn’t normally think of? “She sat on the glass in the corner.” What’s a stronger verb? “She splatted her ass down on the glass in the corner.” That plays with the sounds as well and has a bold attitude.
“The mildew on the framed photo of her yacht, the Mother O’Mine, hugged the slippery wall above the bathtub. Black knobby-knucked fingers of mold splayed out above the wood.” How can we push this claustrophobic queasy feeling further? “The dirt on the walls moved. He pressed his cheek against the grime, staring at it with eyes widened. He hoped to catch catch the dirt in motion even when it knew he was watching. He was not someone to mess with. He was mess itself.”
If the sentences are consistently simple Subject/Verb, they become choppy and unpleasantly repetitive. The jerky rhythms sounds unsophisticated and emphasizes generic straightforwardness. Instead, vary sentence structure.
Repetitive: “Timmy fell off the tiger. Timmy didn’t like playing at the playground. The colorful animals went around in circles. He didn’t like that. He was too young.”
Varied: “The moment little Timmy first rode the painted grinning tiger circling in the playground, he slid off. Younger than everyone else there, he cried because he hated acting like he was having fun, despised it all with every molecule of his skin and eyeballs and spit and the dark mystery of his rectum. Unstoppable in tears, he hated every bit of playing!”
Leveling Up
Turning sentences more specific, and following the path of surprise when composing the next sentences, you can give yourself new ideas for stories you may never have thought of otherwise. Stimulating your imagination is a great way of overcoming writer’s block.
If you have any sentences that are made of general words (like sad, happy, pretty, dark, young, loud, heavy, educated, surprised, walk, study, drive, man, house, meal and car) — see how many of the words you can change into something more specific.
Don’t leave us expecting more explanation of a partial statement and then give us whiplash by switching to a new topic without warning. You might need a transitional phrase or sentence to guide us rather than disorienting us. But consider following those sentences with new sentences that demonstrate an entertaining attitude, a funny twist, very different sentence and paragraph length, or new topics that we wouldn’t have expected. Specificity, variation and surprise are useful tactics sentence by sentence to take your story in unexpected directions beyond mediocre cliche.
