Just words or WORDS?

Job 4:4 Thy words have upholden him that was falling, and thou hast strengthened the feeble knees.
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Words words words. Sure you’re building a story, you being the architect of the masterpiece, but are you building your story on just words or WORDS?

There is a difference you know. I can write a poem and by the time I’ve revised it, many of the unimportant words have bit the dust and my poem comes out stronger in my minds eye. This is what we need to do to our stories.

Sure we hate cutting out words, but we need to make sure the reader is getting every juicy morsel of our work and not just words spilled on the paper like yesterdays coffee stain. Our words are our tools in making the reader flip through paragraph after paragraph. They need to see each blooming chapter as being filled with new possibilities for your character(s).

If you’re writing a novel, those first words in a paragraph are so important to keeping your reader reading. We usually call it the hook. The first paragraph, you say, not the first page? Nope, it is that very first paragraph that has to pack so much punch that the reader will be willing to move onto the second, third and fourth paragraph.

I have read books where I’ve gotten through the entire first power-packed chapter only to find that the second chapter had less fizzle than sizzle and I wound up never reading the entire story. Is this what you want for your reader? I didn’t think so. You didn’t sit at the keyboard hours on end typing fifty thousand words only to find you’ve written nothing with substance, just a bunch of words slung onto the page, thrown together like a heap of wind driven leaves.

In revision, you need to cut out those unnecessary words, fill the sentence with flavor, scan each chapter as if you were panning for gold, and make each and every paragraph leap out at you. Make your story what you think every reader wants in their arsenal of literature.

Do you have a heap pile? That’s the pile of books that have gone un-read, sit on your shelf looking out at you like the long lost teddy-bear of years gone by, wishing you would pick it up and hold it endearingly.

I don’t have a heap pile. ha ha I only buy or read books that I know are going to get me to the end and fulfill the commitment that the writer began in the first place and that is to make my reading journey a pleasant experience.

Don’t waste you or the readers time on ‘just words’, make every one count so in the end, we the writer and reader are fulfilled in the journey!

Job 8: 10 Shall not they teach thee, and tell thee, and utter words out of their heart?

The Building of a Story

Matt: 7:26 And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:
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At my Writers Village University hangout we are often in discussions of what it takes to build a story. Bob Hembree, the mastermind of WVU is an intelligent man who has brilliant articles on the matter of sentence structure, metaphors, and the philosophy behind the building of a story, word by word.

I’m a poet and as such I love metaphors. I love the idea of a hidden meaning somewhere in the makings of a story. Like a poem, a story needs to have a grander picture than what the reader is actually reading at face value.

Recently I read Animal Farm by George Orwell and while unimpressed with his style of writing, I was floored by the hidden meaning of a tale that is now listed as a classic. Like many classics, the meaning of the story transcends time and space.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding is another story I read that held deep meaning in every page. I gather, from my interpretation, that man is a beast with struggles on many levels. In Animal Farm, men are pigs; in LOTF, man is a barbaric beast. So you see, this is just my take on the books while others would walk away with a philosophical explanation and may give deep levels of understanding. But we all walk away with something different.

What I’m getting at here is that stories can’t just be written to TELL the reader a story, there has to be intricate levels to your story to make it worthy of any publisher. They have to see that deeper hidden meaning, whether subtle or an in-your-face kind of meaning.

So how do we build a story? We take it brick by brick; layer upon layer, and give the novel shape. You can write twenty thousand words or eighty thousand words, if they have no shape, no structure, your tale will fall flat and on blind eyes, not one glance.

Here I go with the house metaphor again. You see a plot of ground (blank page) and you want to build on it (write a novel.) You are not going to just start building the walls, floor and roof are you? You’re going to check that the foundation (the meat of your story) is sound. This is where the outline becomes your best tool. The outline gives you a visual of how the story begins, all its ups and downs, riddled with conflicts, and a possible ending to your tale. Without an outline, you’re writing without a foundation.

You need to be the architect of your story. You shouldn’t write a tale, then decide, “Hey, I should have checked the foundation first.” You’ll find that after ten revisions, your story still isn’t grabbing the reader after the first chapter. What did you do wrong? You more than likely built your novel on sand and now will have to work extra harder in finding the solid ground it has to stand on in order to be published.

Lyrics: On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand; All other ground is sinking sand.