Infuse your writing with emotion“Alas! That journals so voluminously begun should come to so lame and impotent a conclusion as most of them did.”

Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

Write a killer opening (lede)

Invoke the senses

Touch:

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”

Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov

Invoke the sensesSmell:

“It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love."

Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Love in the Time of Cholera

Invoke the senses

Sight:

"A green hunting cap squeezed the top of a fleshy balloon of a head."

John Kennedy Toole: A Confederacy of Dunces (1980)

Invoke the senses

Taste:

"Under certain circumstance there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea."

Henry James: The Portrait of a Lady

Or, just start the story"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina

or

"He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish."

Ernest Hemingway: The Old Man And The Sea

Describe the scene. Show me, don’t tell me.

It sits in the lap of an amphitheater of hills which are three hundred to seven hundred feet high, and carefully cultivated clear to their summits–not a foot of soil left idle. Every farm and every acre is cut up into little square enclosures by stone walls, whose duty it is to protect the growing products from the destructive gales that blow there.

Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

Describe the scene. Show me, don’t tell me.

In the last part of May the sky grew pale and the clouds that had hung in high puffs for so long in the spring were dissipated. The sun flared down on the growing corn day after day until a line of brown spread along the edge of each green bayonet.

John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

Describe the scene. Show me, don’t tell me.

He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull.

Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

Describe the scene. Show me, don’t tell me.

By 7:30 it was beyond berserk with bikes, the air was like L.A. on short plumbing, the subtle city war instead the war had renewed itself for another day, relatively light on actual violence but intense with bad feeling.

Michael Herr, Dispatches

Use strong descriptors: Literary Devices Sounds

Alliteration, successive words with the same first letter, e.g. “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.”

Assonance, repetition of vowel sounds, e.g. “The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.”

Etymological figures, i.e. puns on different words with the same root, e.g. “Our heart is restless until it rests with you.”

Crescendo, building climax through increasing number of syllables, e.g. “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.”

Onomatopoeia, verbal imitation of the sound of something, e.g. jingle, whisper.

Use strong descriptors: Literary Devices Word Order

Similar structure, e.g. “Roses are red, violets are blue.”

Opposite structure, e.g. “Ask not what your country can do for you.”

Tricolon, group of three words, e.g. “Friends, Romans, countrymen” or “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” or “of the people, by the people, for the people.” (Shakespeare, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln) Snap, crackle, pop.

Epanalepsis, repetition of a word from the beginning of the sentence at the end, e.g. The King is dead. Long live the King.” or “Blow winds and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!”

In particular, these have the effect of embedding a thought in memory.

Use strong descriptors: Literary Devices

Images and Modes of Expression

Simile, comparison with “like” or “as,” e.g. Your lips are like wine.

Metaphor, comparison without “like” or “as,” e.g. “I drink the wine of your lips.”

Personification, “The sky smiled upon us.”

Metonymy, word substitution, e.g. The White House; The prow coursed the waves; Nice wheels!

Use strong descriptors: Literary Devices Images and Modes of Expression

Transferred epithet, adjective on the wrong noun, e.g. restless night, happy morning, “Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time” (Wilfred Owen)

Litotes (double negative) e.g. not unexpectedly, not without tears.

Antithesis, balanced opposites, e.g. “kindly to my friends, deadly to my enemies.”

Polyptoton, use of same word in different cases, e.g. Art for art’s sake.

Irony, saying the opposite of what is meant, e.g. Donald Trump is one of the greatest thinkers in American politics.

Editing yourself

Use active verbs. Passive construction dilutes your power.

Eliminate unnecessary words.

Avoid qualifiers. (Pretty, little, very.)

Write with nouns and verbs. Make them carry the weight. Make adjectives and adverbs scarce.

Do not overwrite. (Don’t search for the big word. Use the vernacular.)

Do not explain too much. (Show, don’t tell.)

Character

There is not a modern plow in the islands, or a threshing machine. All attempts to introduce them have failed. The good Catholic Portuguese crossed himself and prayed God to shield him from all blasphemous desire to know more than his father did before him.

Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

Character traits you can reveal that give your story punch

Positive emotions: calm, friendship, favor, pity, pride.

Negative emotions: anger, fear, shame, indignation, envy, jealousy.

What is the proximate cause of the fear?

What is the source of the pride?

Favor and gratitude: who is pleasing whom, and why?

Pity and indignation. Pity is a reaction to misfortune of those not deserving it. Indignation is a reaction to the good fortune of the undeserving.

Other elements that define character

Youth vs. old age

Wealth vs. poverty

Power vs. weakness

Spirituality vs. materialism

Others?

The object of writing is judgment.

Emotion accompanies judgment.

A very brief suggested reading list

On Writing

Elements of Style, Strunk and WhiteOn Writing Well, William ZinnserOn Writing, Stephen KingThe Observation Deck, Naomi Epel

Travel books or books about journeysThe Innocents Abroad, Mark TwainLonesome Dove, Larry McMurtryDon Quixote, Miguel de CervantesDispatches, Michael Herr

Conclusion

If you wish to inflict a heartless and malignant punishment upon a young person, pledge him to keep a journal for a year.

Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad (again)