One of the first things I heard in grad school was from Rosellen Brown, who tried valiantly to warn me away from the "sitting and thinking" story.
I didn't take the warning completely to heart, though I knew it was serious and applied to me. Hence, no doubt, my own fiction output.
Now I find that I have the same basic discussion all the time with my college students. Through one of them this semester, I came across this exercise from the beloved Chuck Palahniuk. In the essay, Nuts and Bolts: Thought Verbs, Palahniuk offers up an incredible discipline in examining these problematic thoughts--these insights so crucial to us as writers and so deadly boring to our readers. The essentials are below:
I didn't take the warning completely to heart, though I knew it was serious and applied to me. Hence, no doubt, my own fiction output.
Now I find that I have the same basic discussion all the time with my college students. Through one of them this semester, I came across this exercise from the beloved Chuck Palahniuk. In the essay, Nuts and Bolts: Thought Verbs, Palahniuk offers up an incredible discipline in examining these problematic thoughts--these insights so crucial to us as writers and so deadly boring to our readers. The essentials are below:
...pick through your writing and circle every “thought” verb. Then, find some way to eliminate it. Kill it by Un-packing it.
Then, pick through some published fiction and do the same thing. Be ruthless.
“Marty imagined fish, jumping in the moonlight…”
“Nancy recalled the way the wine tasted…”
“Larry knew he was a dead man…”
Find them. After that, find a way to re-write them. Make them stronger.
Check the whole thing out here and give his exercise a shot--if you dare.
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