3 Ways to Make Fiction Easy to Read

In an age of Facebook and Twitter, where anyone with a keyboard can invent abbreviations, sling the slang around, and bloviate without boundaries, why would I be advising people to keep it simple?

Simple! With so much competition from manufactured sound bites, if your writing isn't inviting, it's going to drown in a sea of overwritten prose. And it will drown fast.

But how can you make your fiction enticing and popular without sacrificing literary principles? That's easy, too. Just follow these tips for fashioning modern literature for the twenty-first century readers.

Engage. Catch your reader's eye, right from the first word, of the first paragraph. Think of what makes you want to read a post on a blog or a news site. Perhaps it's something scandalous about a public figure. Or it's an uncommon human-interest story, such as the 2010 rescue of 33 Chilean miners in a flawless recovery operation. Or it's a terrifying natural disaster. Verbs are good for snagging a reader's attention at the outset. Strong verbs included convicted, rescued, or pummeled. A one-word sentence consisting of only a verb has successfully begun a number of intriguing stories and novels.

Reduce. Clear the clutter. Say what you want to say in that crucial first paragraph, and then put that paragraph on a starvation diet, leaving it with only as many verbal nutrients as you need to express your ideas.

Let's say you started a story this way:

Panicked. She was doomed. Melanie glanced around the room, searching for a way out, grabbing helplessly at locked windows, doors that wouldn't open, and no way out except into a dim hallway from which haunting sounds were echoing. She strained to hear what could have been the soundtrack of a horror movie or real-life victims being tortured. Hopelessly, she scanned the desks and tables for a phone, even though she'd have no way of telling a rescuer where she was and who had brought her there, blindfolded, in the dark of night, in the trunk of a car. She was doomed.

Not bad for a start. Now get out your red pen, and here's a better way to catch and hold onto your readers:

Panicked. Melanie searched for an escape from the room, grabbing at locked windows and doors, cringing at a dim hallway. The groans and growls could have been the soundtrack of a horror movie - or real-life torture victims. She scanned the furniture for a phone, though she had no idea where she was, or who had blindfolded her that night and forced her into the trunk of a car. She was doomed.
Identify. Simple doesn't have to mean condescending. You can enrich your fiction with savory details that make readers see and hear the scene you set. You can bring them to a place they've never visited, and probably never will. But you must define exotic details so that readers can build a mental picture.

Here's an example, where the characters are meeting natives from deep in the Amazonian rainforest:

It's midnight, and they're all exhausted. The Hillyers each lie down in a rickety hammock and try to sleep, but the Yanomami know nothing about keeping quiet so that others can sleep. In fact, they wake up and fall asleep as easily as house cats. Elvis says that you have to learn how to sleep through their talking, snoring, and crying babies.

At around one o'clock in the morning, a tribal elder stands in the center of the shapono and delivers a long, booming speech about hunting and fishing. No one hushes him. Maybe an hour later, a shaman under the influence of natural hallucinogens performs a prolonged mystical chant. Alarmed, Carmela stands between the children's hammocks. Elvis tells her not to worry and translates the speech and the chanting.

In spite of the never-ending conversations inside the shapono, they all doze off until about 3:00 am, when a man at a nearby hearth leaps up, says a few words to anyone who might be listening, grabs an axe, and starts swinging it around overhead. Carmela screams and tries to cover her sleeping children with her body. Tobias jumps up and throws his arms around all of them.

"Go back to sleep," Elvis scolds. "He's only going out to chop some firewood." Indeed, percussive chopping sounds commence outside the shapono and continue for an hour or so. None of the Hillyers understand how anyone can sleep in this society.

You can write exciting fiction with vivid details and real-life characters, and you can do this without making readers plow through dense paragraphs and complicated sentences to follow the action. In fact, you're better off if you don't! The Internet is a glorious medium, kind of an encyclopedia of modern life, and it has spoiled us. We want to know what's going on right away! If it's not interesting, we'll just click to another web page.

In your fiction writing, grab your readers' loyalty from the very beginning. Engage, reduce, and identify. Now that's a tale worth reading - and worth writing.

Lilian Duval was born in New York City of French-speaking parents. She is a technical writer for a software company, and before that, created software for Wall Street firms until the terrorist attack on her building in 2001. Her employment history includes, in chronological order: nurse's aide in a nursing home; bookkeeper's assistant at O. Henry Steak House in Greenwich Village; suburban stringer for a small-town newspaper; teacher of English as a second language; and instructor in computer programming. Lilian lives in New Jersey with her husband George, a native of Singapore. They have two sons and a daughter, all grown, and several cats. She studies classical guitar and enjoys attending concerts and plays in New York City. To learn more, please visit http://www.lilianduval.com

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/6192113

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