Things I have trouble with when writing

[ayngelcat]

And I'm just wondering if anyone else does too, and how they have dealt with it. Very happy to take advice/counsel from experienced writers or those who are good at the following, or discuss with others who also have found these hard:

1. Similes and metaphors. This is the biggest one. I know I don't put nearly enough of them in - and they're so wonderfully effective if you can do them well. I find it hard to think of good ones, and tend to repeat things like 'his temper simmered, a bomb waiting to explode,' which I think are probably quite yawnworthy at times. I also find s's and m's in the tf universe quite challenging because you can't use the organic natural world ones as you would in humanfic. Things like 'a nascent beginning, like a bud unfurling' simply do not work!

2. Resisting the temptation to describe people's feelings in too much detail instead of letting the the reader draw their own inferences. Describing body language as opposed to saying "he felt this ..." or "he shuddered, thinking of X..." I'm getting better but I still slip up and have not quite gotten the balance right.

3. Descriptions of places. Working out how much detail you need and slipping enough in to engage the senses without it dominating all else. Sometimes I struggle with where to put descriptions in, too.

There's others, but that will do to be going on with. All views gratefully received :DDD

Comments

[neverminetohold.livejournal.com]

My greatest weakness is writing fight scenes, I find that I often lack the vocabulary to describe what happens, especially movements or hand-to-hand combat.

As for describing peoples feelings... Hm, I usually use a mix of the POV character simply thinking about what they feel and showing those emotions through non-verbal language. I prefer to spell some things out plainly, because I'm not sure how smart (or dense) my readers really are when it comes to reading the subtext/between the lines ^.^" Because when I was younger myself, I missed many hints, just didn't pick up on them and got bored by many books that I now love, and not everyone is very empathetic.

Descriptions are tricky. Do you know why I never made it farther into 'Lord of the Rings' than 100 pages? It was because Tolkien talked too much about nature for my taste and that bored me to tears ^_^" But almost everyone else loves the books to pieces... So, tricky. When I started writing, back when I only wrote in German, I put in lengthy paragraphs of descriptions, even ones that were totally unnecessary to drive the story forward. Now I give the readers enough to know where the character is, but in the end, how many descriptive passages I use depends heavily on the POV character.

[ayngelcat.livejournal.com]

Yeah I always dread writing fight scenes, though they often turn out better than I think they will. Does it help to have a lot of vocabulary though, or is describing in simple language just as effective? I think pov fight scenes are hard because all the need to describe feelings, reactions etc crop up again but that maybe comes down agiain to being in characters' heads.

There are a lot of descriptions in LOTR. LOL and I love those books - maybe that's why I always think it would be good to inject the odd amazing description here and there without overdoing it!

Does that mean English is not your first language? Wow - I'm always awestruck by that, especially when I never would have known :DD

[neverminetohold.livejournal.com]

Mine do too, most often ^_^" But then, my writing is mostly not very action focused and many things can be glossed over without being too obvious. I too like to focus on the characters emotions and avoid turning the fight scene into some sort of martial arts tournament commentary... Still, it's what I struggle with the most.

I had a feeling you would say that about LotR LOL

No, my first language is German - and thank you for the compliment; that means my English teachers must have been doing something right over the years ;)