by
Donald L. Vasicek
Fiction writing is a visual medium. Thus, writing must reflect visual images.
The more detailed these images are, the more visual what you are writing is,
and in any writing, detail is everything. Remember show and tell in
elementary school? When writing fiction, showing tells. Telling
doesn’t show. It is vital to show. How does the writer do that?
One way to improve one’s writing is to focus on verb usage. The use of
action verbs always sparks up the writing, gives the writer the opportunity
to be more detailed, and makes fiction writing more visual. Verb
usage “forces” the writer to write visually. The use of action verbs “forces”
the writer to be more creative and more visual.
For example, “John is blind.” This is telling. The key here is the verb.
The verb, “is,” is passive. It tells what John is, which is fine, depending
upon the kind of writing you are doing. Passive verbs, however, usually
make sentences boring when the writer’s goal is to be entertaining.
When writing fiction, the writer cannot afford to be boring. “John’s blank eyes
reflect a zombie-like look.” The verb here, “reflect”, is more visual. It shows
the reader how John’s eyes are, and then, leaves it up to the reader to
wonder, “What is going on here?” The reader will then hungrily read on
to find out what is going on.
Another aspect of making writing more competitive is to keep the
writing lean. It gives the reader a better opportunity to move through the read
faster, something most all people want to do who read scripts and manuscripts
as part of the way they make living. Editors, publishers,
agents, producers, directors, actors, etc. usually have manuscripts or
scripts stacked up on their reading table. They need to read, and they
need to read as rapidly as they can. So, one of the goals for you, the writer,
is to make sure you write in a way that makes your writing easy to read.
So, what you might want to do is go back through what you have
written. Focus on the verbs. Change those verbs to action verbs
where you see that it makes your writing more detailed, and
more visual. This will shorten what you are writing, but in the
same stroke of the pen, make it more vivid, more graphic, and
more visual. And the bonus here, is the reader will be more
attracted to what you have written.