About Us \  Services & Prices  \  Shopping Cart \  Affiliates  \   Authors Only  \  Contact Us

TIPS ON CREATING IMMEDIACY

IN YOUR WORK

   by Cassandra Skevis

Readers read fiction for the experience.  Creating an illusion that makes them forget they’re reading is your goal.  Here are some tips on how to do that:

1. Choose the right point of view for your opening, the most interesting point of view, the point of view that will involve  the reader in the action by making them feel something: fear, terror, compassion,    excitement etc.

2. Create conflict.  Don’t wait until you’ve set the stage for it.  Begin the book with discord.  This immediately captures the reader’s attention.  Keep descriptions clear and simple.  Boil them down to the most essential elements.  It’s completely unnecessary to write long paragraphs describing minute details of scene and setting.  These can and should be worked into the action.

3. Involve all the reader’s senses.  While all writers show us  how things look, only the most skilled remember to incorporate sound,touch, smell, and taste into the action. The more deeply you can get readers to experience the place you’ve taken them, the more urgently they will read your story.

4. Keep point of view consistent throughout scenes.  Although you can change point of view, it’s usually a good idea to maintain one point of view per scene. 

5. how. Don’t tell.  This is probably one of the most elementary and important tenets of writing.  Don’t expound on events.  Don’t tell us what’s happening.  Make it happen before  our eyes.  Get readers involved.

6. Make things move.  Use objects to make the reader enter your fictional world.  If they can see (in their mind’s eye) the knife cutting bread, the wind blowing, the earring dancing, the water rippling, they’re that much closer to being there.

7. Keep events in order.  Don’t tell us that Mary went out to the car after getting her purse.  Tell us that Mary got her purse and went out to the car.

8. Use active, rather than passive sentences.