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

[thousanth.livejournal.com]

I guess when it comes to describing places I tend to go with the two or three things that encapsulate the spirit of the place, and fill in the details by way of nods towards them contained in the actions of characters. Your character's in front of a large, old house, full of shadows. "He walked up the path, the gravel crunching beneath his feet" tells you there's a stony path and gives the reader that scrunchy sound in their ears to help them fill the rest of the details in themselves. If that makes sense?

[ayngelcat.livejournal.com]

Yes that does, and am I right in thinking that you edit out anything not necessary or with a repetitive effect. i.e. you would not say: "he walked up the stony path, the gravel crunching beneath his feet." Too much information?

I am getting better at that type of thing. I used to put in a lot more unnnecessary and repetetive detail ^^

Thanks for your help :)

[thousanth.livejournal.com]

I'd say leave out the stony because yes, excess info. The mention of the gravel in the latter half of the sentence tells you that it can't be anything other than stony.

It's a hard one to give advice for really, because I don't think there's any "right" way of writing. That's why I very rarely offer to beta anything other than strict grammar or "this is how your fic made me feel" type jobs. A lot of this stuff is down to personal style and preference.