One thing that comes up a lot in beginner/intermediate writers’ works is that the writing just doesn’t feel real enough.
When reading the words on the page, it doesn’t feel like the character is speaking or that it takes place is another world. Instead, it just sounds like the author talking.
So how do you make your story sound more real? Let’s take a look at one book that does it extremely well: 11/22/63 by Stephen King.
During the last stream, we took a look at the opening few pages to 11/22/63 and examined it paragraph by paragraph.
As we read it and went over it, I asked the viewers to pay special attention to how the author makes it feel real. What specifically is there that makes it feel genuine/honest?
Here’s a sample of the annotating we did to the beginning.
This is a dangerous opening that could’ve gone very wrong in lesser hands!
Here’s a quick summary of three ways to make sure your story feels real:
- #1. Use specifics (to make your world feel real)
- For example, instead of “mom died unexpectedly,” King writes: “Mom’s thunderclap heart attack while walking on a Florida beach“
- Instead of “I cried when my mom died,” he writes: “I went into our little laundry room and took a dirty sheet out of the basket and cried into that”
- #2. Write vividly/uniquely (to brings the reader into your world)
- Instead of “I went home alone,” he writes: “I went back inside the little house with the great big mortgage. The house where no baby had come, or now ever would.”
- Instead of “the crowd was loud,” he writes: “I could hear the shouts of the crowd as the sports-beasts fought.“
- #3. Talk about details that the reader wouldn’t expect (to bond us to your world and makes us want to know more)
- Instead of “teaching was hard,” he writes: “What made the job hard was that the red pen became my primary teaching tool instead of my mouth.”
- Instead of “it was messily written,” he writes: “He must have been bearing down hard, because the words were engraved into the cheap notebook pages, like reading Braille.”
We go into a lot more detail during the video, so if you’re interested in leveling up your own writing, and seeing a unique way to write a beginning to a story, then be sure to watch the full video below.
After that, we did this prompt from Writer’s Digest: The person whom you or your character has been trying to talk to for ages finally answers the phone. Who is this person? Why were you or your character trying to track them down for so long? How does the phone conversation progress?
Chat voted that we write our phone call conversation between Anxiety and Sanity.
Here’s what we ended up with:
“Oh thank god! Sanity, you finally picked up. Do you have any idea how long I’ve been waiting for you?”
“Hello Anxiety. You’ve been waiting two years and 235 days, by my count.”
“You mean you just ignored me? When I needed you the most!”
“Yes.”
“I’m crying, you know!”
“Anxiety, you cried when you woke up and saw that zit on your chin.”
“And also stepped on the scale and saw that I’d gained two pounds! That was a terrible morning. You should’ve been there for me.”
“I was. That was the last time we spoke. I felt like we needed some distance so I could retain some of myself.”
“Things have only gotten worse, Sanity! Global warming is finally hitting. And with that current state of immigration and refugee policies in the world, we’re nowhere near equipped to—”
“Anxiety, do like we practiced. Take a pizza breath. Hold the sizzling pizza in front of you and breathe in the cheesy fumes, then breath out to cool it down.”
“I don’t have time for pizza breaths, Sanity! Not when literal slave labor is still a thing! Not when fascism is on the rise again! Not when multi-billion-dollar companies pay less in taxes than me!”
“Why don’t we talk about something else. How are your parents, Fear and Disappointment?”
“Don’t even talk to me about my parents! Between college loans, car payments, health insurance—that doesn’t cover mental health, mind you!—I can’t even think about moving out. And you know what that means: no relationship for Anxiety! No one wants to come back home after a date when my parents are in the living room watching Big Bang Theory. And since all my friends are getting married and pooping out kids, we don’t have anything in common and I haven’t seen them anywhere except on Facebook for the past five months but hey who’s counting?”
“You do post a lot on Facebook.”
“And that’s the problem! You always have to look happy and perfect online, because if you show one ounce of uncertainty then people will cackle at you behind their screens and think about how much better they are than you will ever be.”
“So is that all or—”
“Did you know that sugar is in everything? Even some meats and vegetables. And of course anything that doesn’t have it costs a million dollars. So I have to choose between eating garbage and disappointing my parents by dying from a heart attack before I can get married, or spending all my paycheck on food that won’t kill me but that disappoints them by keeping me trapped in their prison-home for all eternity!”
“Anxiety, I have a feeling that something might be worrying you. But I just can’t put my finger on what.”
“It’s probably because the ending of Game of Thrones is coming. Waiting each week for a new episode is literally killing me!”
“Maybe we should watch the next one together.”
“…I’d like that.”
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Featured image: Amazon