Between the Covers - writing tips & tricks

Just Don't

We've discussed things like descriptions, setting and describing your scene, and allowing your readers to 'see' your characters. Let's discuss a little about things you shouldn't do or words you shouldn't use to describe things.

Let's begin with how you describe voices in speech. 

The guy was big and muscular with a deep voice.

It's a decent description but how much does it really tell you about the man or how he sounds?

The man towered over her, his eyes dark and menacing, and when he spoke his voice was a deep rumble she swore she could feel in her chest. 

While short and simple may work in everyday life, in writing it isn't always the way to go. While you don't want to be a wordy writer who drowns your readers in unnecessary language, you don't want to leave them wondering about things either. 

There are many different ways to describe things and it isn't always easy to find the right words to say what you want and need to. There will be times you'll write something, then rewrite it, then scrap it and start over. I know I've repeated it several times but you do need to find a balance and keep your readers interested. 

She hit the brakes as quickly as she could and put the car to a rough halt. She was clasping the steering wheel whilst breathing heavily while watching two men step out of the vehicle ahead of them.

It's a rough description of the scene and it doesn't make a lot of sense. There's whilst and while, which are essentially the same thing and they're appearing in the same sentence. There's a lot wrong with this paragraph. Let's see if we can fix it. 

She stomped on the brake pedal, the tires locked, and the car squealed across the pavement several feet before it can to a jarring halt. Her hands gripped the steering wheel tightly, her eyes remained fixed on the two men who stepped from the vehicle blocking their path. Her breathing was rapid with a slight hitch here and there as her fear threatened to overwhelm her.

This paragraph lets you hear and feel things in a much clearer way. 

We discussed speech tags and I want to touch on them again a little bit. While you want to vary your tags, don't try to switch them up so much you begin making up things to describe speech. Whisper-shout is not a thing. You can't whisper and shout at the same time. They're two completely different things at opposite ends of the speech volume spectrum. If you want to describe someone whispering, but also trying to get a point across you can say, she whispered as loudly as she dared. This tells you that she was attempting to remain quiet to avoid discovery, but she also raised her voice to gain her companion's attention. 

There are things you can do, but you can't make things up that don't appear in normal language. Yes, you can create a language for your people who live in a different world but things must make sense so your readers can follow it, even if you're attempting to create a completely alien or fantasy world. If they can't relate to it they won't read it.