WRITING TIPS FROM THE AUTHOR
Writing Tips
"I count myself one of the number of those who write as they
learn and learn as they write." Augustine, Letters
cxliii.2, as cited in John Calvin to the Reader,
Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1559
"Luther once said, 'The devil hates goose quills,' and, doubtless, he has good reason, for ready writers, by the Holy Spirit's blessing, have done his kingdom much damage." C. H. Spurgeon (May 29, Morning and Evening)
Keep these things in mind as you write: ( Read the author's daughter Brittany Bond's award winning short story below)
1. Be a careful observer of people and events around you. "He is a great observer, and he looks / Quite through the deeds of men" (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar). Keen, perceptive observation is an important quality that made Shakespeare a great writer. It is essential for any good writer.
2. Write down your observations. Keep a blank book handy for
writing careful descriptions of people and places. Keep paper and pencil by your bed at night so that when
ideas come you are ready to write them down--then you'll be able to get back
to sleep. I
have been writing in blank books since college and throughout many journeys and
voyages. I wrote long before I had any clear idea that I was going to write
books. Am I ever glad that I did! I have frequently consulted those journals and used
material from them in my books. The Swiss farm scene in the second Mr.
Pipes book, for example, comes right out of the pages I wrote while living and working on a
Swiss dairy farm near Lausanne in 1982--including the one-legged milking stool
and the parrot!
3.
“Reading maketh a full man," wrote Francis Bacon (1561-1626), "and writing an exact man.” Never attempt to write with an
empty
mind. Always write with a well-fed imagination and a well-nourished mind. Find the best books and read and reread
them. Study them
carefully and decide what makes them so good. Then, imitate the syntax (the way
of putting words together to make sentences) in your own writing.
Bacon also wrote: “Some books are to be tasted, others to be
swallowed, and some
few to be chewed and digested.” Read the later kind if you want to be an exact
man. C. S. Lewis said it was important to "keep the clean sea
breezes of the centuries blowing through our minds." He believed this "can be
done only by reading old books.” Flannery O’Connor wrote (pictured
at age 3 reading a book), “It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to
allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.” She
argues for reading books from the Western canon. “And if the student finds that
this is not to his taste? Well, that is regrettable. Most regrettable. His taste
should not be consulted; it is being formed."
4. Write about things and places with which you are already familiar. You don't have to go to Scotland to find material for a good story. Start in your own backyard. C. S. Lewis wrote the Narnia tales from an upstairs room in his home near Oxford, the Kilns, looking out over a forest and a pond (Shelley the poet's pond) full of animals. That was his backyard, and it worked pretty well as a setting for Narnia, don't you think? Remember, John Bunyan wrote from a jail cell. And so did the Apostle Paul. You don't need an exotic setting to write well!
5. Show; don't tell. Avoid writing, "He was a couch potato." That's telling. Show your reader what this looks like in a boy: posture, words, tone of voice, attitude--show these and, if you have done a good job, you will not need to tell them he is lazy, or fat, or dull. Try this. "'Would you get me another bowl of ice cream?'" asked Larry, stifling a burp with the back of a hand that looked like an inflated surgical glove. He lay sprawled on the couch, his eyes half closed, his mouth more than half open. Light flickered from the TV where slender, energetic actors pitched the latest labor-saving device." You get the idea.
6. Avoid clichés--like the plague!
7. Avoid adverbs. Show action with active verbs, and you will not need adverbs. In dialogue use said Jane for your attributions. By the way, don't waste time coming up with creative ways to say said. Expostulated Jane, only serves to draw attention away from the story to the attribution. Don't write, said Jane, pleasantly, or actively, or happily. Make the dialogue and Jane's posture, face, and tone show pleasantness. Again, show; don't tell. Important rule.
8. Never aim at style; aim at authenticity. The reader should get so absorbed in the story that he forgets there is an author (I must decrease). Few things are as obnoxious as an author trumpeting fancy words and phrases, saying, in effect: "Forget the story. Look at me. Aren't I clever." Work yourself into the background. Don't use language to inflate the common place--or the author.
9. Be brief. Keep it simple and clear. Always ask yourself if you could write the same paragraph with fewer words. Nearly every time the paragraph will be better if it is shorter. Remember, "Less is more."
10. Read good poetry. Practice writing poetry in conventional forms, like sonnets in iambic pentameter. Nothing will make you as aware of cadence, rhythm, and the subtle nuances of the sound and meaning of words as writing your own poetry. One author calls "poetry the pushups of prose." He was right.
11. Know the English language, the quintessential multicultural language. Study Elements of Style, by Strunk and White. Read Beyond Style, by Provost. Read Secrets of Successful Fiction, by Peck. These are all books given to me by college English teacher, Mary Jane Bond--my mother. Without her I would never have written anything worth reading.
12. Read what you have written out loud. This is the big test. If it puts your readers to sleep, or makes them embarrassed, better rewrite. I read everything I write out loud to my kids. If they are reading Calvin and Hobbs behind a pillow, I'd better go back and rewrite. If I hear sniffles (when Brodie gets shot, for example) at the right places, I figure I am getting close.
13. Remember the three keys to good writing: Rewriting, rewriting, and rewriting. I am not a good writer. I am, however, making progress as a rewriter.
14. Above all, read the Bible. It is God-breathed. We are
image bearers of God. There is no greater book than the Bible. Master its
content, and you will write about the most important things. Master its style,
and you will write about them in the most imaginative and winsome ways.
The author's
daughter, Brittany Marie Bond (18), won 2nd place in the Our Own Words,
Pierce County Library Foundation, the Pierce County Arts Commission, and The
News Tribune high school writing contest. Of twelve high school poetry and short
story regional honors and cash prizes four were awarded to the author's Covenant
High School English students. Brittany and her fellow award recipients were
featured in a News Tribune article May 16, 2006 and read their poetry and
short stories in an awards ceremony at Lagerquist Hall, Pacific Lutheran
University, May 24. How well did Brittany implement the writing tips?
Not For Time, by Brittany Bond
I rowed as quietly as possible across the glassy bay—squirming on the thwart because I’d stepped on it with wet feet before sitting on it. As I rounded the spit the house came into view, looking more like a fortress made of silvered wood than the humble dwelling it had been. Its once brightly lit window stared vacantly at me without recognition.
"Well, what did you expect," I muttered to myself, "it to welcome you with open arms? You hardly gave it cause for that."
After beaching the dory, I stepped gingerly up the seaweed-coated stairs that led to the empty doorway to the basement. The basement was now bare but for a few sawhorses in the far corner. Yet in my mind’s eye the room came alive, as it had been long ago.
"John, John, Danny’s here!" shouted my Aunt Meg as she dragged me by the hand down the steep stairs.
Uncle John nodded in my direction but said nothing.
Still smiling like a three-year-old, Aunt Meg skipped back up the stairs, despite the silver braids that swung behind her. I was left alone with the silent man, who was to be my guardian. Getting one slim strip of wood perfectly smooth seemed to be his only concern. As if I needed a guardian; I was twelve years old and big for my age, and here I was packed off to some obscure bay in Puget Sound with two old relatives. For what seemed like hours I sat, eyes half closed and lips sneering at him. He was humming softly, apparently rejoicing in his work. Now and then he sang a few snatches of words, "…sands of time are sinking…" his head wagging to the tune but his hands all the while worked steadily on the dory slowly forming before my eyes. My stomach growled.
"Get that thwart there sanded and fitted—then we’ll think about dinner," he said, without glancing up. I did not move.
Presently a great din came from up the stairs—like someone was kicking pots and pans down some stairs. But it was only Aunt Meg setting the table.
"She’s hint’n she’s hungry," Uncle John said, with the slow smile he always had when speaking about his sister. "So am I." He stumped up the stairs deliberately, but when I tried to follow, "You will not be welcome at dinner till that thwart there is finished, Dan." And he closed the door.
While they ate, I slaved over the thwart—my first meal with them and I never ate it. That was fifteen years ago, just after I had been suspended from middle school.
I climbed the now rotting stairs leading to the kitchen which was still yellow and the evening sun still glowed through the west wall that was all windows. Ivy had invaded through the arched windows and entwined about the cupboards. In a neat row across the ceiling of the kitchen nook were the hooks Uncle John had hammered up for Aunt Meg to hang her lavender to dry. Aunt Meg loved lavender and all herbs, any flower with a scent. She used to sit there, beneath her lavender, listening intently to the sea lapping, the waves breaking over the sand spit and the gulls wheeling above,
"It’s like listening to a concert to hear all that richness," she would say to me as she breathed deep breaths of the lavender and salt, she even liked the smell of seaweed drying on a low tide.
She could tell when the tide was ebbing or flowing from the sound of the waves; she could tell the call of a tern from a kingfisher; she could tell were Uncle John and I were just from the sound of our feet. I glanced into the bright little room, off of the kitchen, which had been her bedroom, fearful of the memories it would hold.
I saw a boy, old enough to know better, slink in and lift the lid of Aunt Meg’s treasured money chest, but as I reached my dirty little paw into it, another hand softly brushed mine aside and closed the lid. I froze for a few seconds, then swung around—her vacant eyes seemed to pierce my soul, and I writhed as one would at the touch of a red-hot poker.
"I expect you’ll find the view from the kitchen’s the same as here," she said leading me away. I cried silently with shame and anger at letting myself get caught; she pretended not to notice, but she had never missed a sound in that house.
I hastily left the room and its memories, turning to the kitchen garden. Aunt Meg loved the cool, richness of dirt, but she never grew anything but herbs. She could grow every herb, both commonplace and exotic, except for thyme, which refused to grow in her little plot of land, despite all her coaxings. I think it had something to do with all the salt in the soil there by the bay, but then, all the other herbs grew. She laughed as once again, come spring, her thyme seed refused to show its head,
"Must be we’re not made for time, Danny," she said; then her face began to glow as if washed in the light of some unknown sun.
That was the last time she ever worked in that little plot of soil.
As I turned away from the overgrown plot of land, a phrase from the song Uncle John had been humming flitted like a ghost through my mind, "Dark, dark hath been the midnight, but dayspring is at hand." Aunt Meg had been overflowing with that dayspring, that "deep sweet well of love." And my life, despite her faithful love, had been a dark, dark midnight. Will dayspring ever come?
Brittany Marie Bond
To read a sample chapter of a new book by Douglas Bond, click here: FATHERS AND SONS