How to Write Stories People Will Love

Question 38: Not sounding forced

Queeny_The_Horse asks: How do you make a scene (like snow falling,) seem elegant without forcing it too much? I'm trying to write the prologue for my story, but writing the opening paragraph doesn't seem right (it starts with a wolf hunting in the snow) it feels like I'm forcing it.

When our writing feels or sounds forced, it's usually because we're trying to write in a style that doesn't suit us. It may also be you're trying to discover what your writing style is, and the only way to do that is to experiment with writing in different ways. Here are a few suggestions for writing in an elegant manner, and hopefully avoiding sounding forced.

Use Strong Verbs

I have an entire chapter called Use Strong Verbs, because they help paint a stronger picture. Compare these two sentences:

The snow fell, and everything was covered in white powder.

The snow fluttered to the ground, blanketing everything in white powder.

In the second example, "fluttered" and "blanketing" are much stronger verbs than "fell" or "was". Our minds can imagine the snowflakes not just falling down, but wafting about as they fall. And then the snow doesn't just settle on the ground, it cozies up to everything like a blanket. We don't get those impressions in the first example.

Think of Emotions Within the Scene

Snow itself doesn't have emotions, but we can attribute emotions to them. Snow can be happily fluttering. Or it can be bone-chillingly severe. Or covering everything in a soggy layer of depression. Adding emotions adds a subtle elegance to a scene that might not have been there before.

Use Creative Analogies

An analogy is when you describe a thing by comparing it to another. "She laughed like a hyena" is an analogy. The feel of an analogy can give a story different vibes. They can be funny, unusual, foreboding, whimsical, or even cliche, if it's an overused one (like my hyena analogy). Here's how I come up with analogies...

In my story, Siena, I wanted the forest to seem like an inviting place to escape to, rather than a dark, scary place. So I thought about things that protect us. Guard dogs. Bodyguards. Guards. Soldiers. Hmm... soldiers could work. I thought of what strong verbs I could use, and came up with "the trees sprang from the ground like protective soldiers."

Watch how different analogies can give the reader different impressions of snow:

- The snow formed swirling patterns, like ripples in a pond.

- The wind battered snow against my face like icy bullets.

- The snow was slushier than my mom's terrible homemade ice cream.

- The snow was an icy pall, weighing everything down like the sadness in my heart. (Double analogy!)

Try to come up with some interesting ones. For me, some of the most memorable lines from books have been analogies I'd never seen before.