Writing Tips that will Color your prose

Important writing skills from the News Desk

A journalistic approach to writing

A Newlywed city girl had an amazing passion. She loved flowers in bloom. She had a backyard garden full of flowers.

Rows upon rows competed to catch the eye. Red, white and purple Carnations strode side by side with yellow and dark crimson Roses. White Lilies and Pink Tulips lined up in an array of brilliance.

Her small garden was home to Red, orange, and pink Gerberas, sprinkled with deep Blue Orchids and Lavender purples that tantalized the eye. Blue, Pink, and Red Hibiscus cluttered amongst exotic species from far-flung islands.

Her garden was a feast of colors. when she wasn’t tending her tiny garden. She would spend hours poring over flower catalogs. She would drool over exotic species and hope to tend them someday.

And then it happened, One day while thumbing through a new catalog she saw a stunning flower she just couldn’t resist. It was the most exquisite species she’d ever seen, she had to have it.

She placed an order, prepared a place at the base of her perimeter fence, and waited. She was thrilled beyond words when it finally arrived.

Day in and day out she worked, tirelessly she watered, mulched, and manured the flower. It grew vigorously. It’s succulent green leaves thrived, one thing however was missing, the beautiful blooms, the flower did not bloom!

She watered, mulched some more, and applied organic fertilizers, still, it did not bloom. Frustrated and at the end of her wits, she decided to uproot the flower and plant something else.

While she was still contemplating, her neighbor, an elderly widowed grandma, peeped over the perimeter wall.

“Thank you so much darling,” she said. The young lady did not know why she was being thanked.

“The flowers in my garden are the most gorgeous species I have ever seen,” said the elderly lady.

“You can’t imagine how much I have enjoyed the blooms of that vine you planted,” she said with a toothy smile.

Unbeknown to the young lady the flower was a creeper, it had crept under the perimeter fence and was blooming in her neighbor’s garden!

Writing is more like that, we water, mulch, and fertilize words. Our readers enjoy luxuriant blooms of our hard labor.

They may or may not thank us. We have to keep watering, fertilizing, and tending the words, if they have to keep on enjoying the blooms.

Stephen King, perhaps one of the greatest writers of our time writes;

“Making people believe the unbelievable is no trick; it’s work. … Belief and reader absorption come in the details: An overturned tricycle in the gutter of an abandoned neighborhood can stand for everything.”

Our job as writers is to paint a word picture. We cheer grumpy faces, gladden heavy hearts, lift downcast souls, warm cold spirits, calm flared tempers. fire up cold visions, awaken dead dreams — all the while destroying self-doubt.

It takes more than hard work — Self-less passion, sweat, and an aching butt to get the reader’s attention. It takes glazed eyes, calloused minds, and numbed fingers, to hold them in awe. Good writers create a gourmet of words — fit for a king and then freely give it away. No writer enjoys eating his own words.

All of us would Love to be A Stephen King, a Mark Twain, or Ernest Hemingway. The problem is very few of us will ever have the patience to pay the price.

“Long patience and application saturated with your heart’s blood — you will either write or you will not — and the only way to find out whether you will or not is to try.” — Jim Tully, WD

The good news is that to be a writer — a great writer, you do not need to reinvent the wheel.

Isaac Newton, the famous Mathematician who discovered the law of relativity, or was it gravity? — ‘I skipped some of my physics classes’ — was humble enough to acknowledge; “If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”

Here are important tips sprinkled with fresh insights — Shoulders of great giants dating back to antiquity that you ought to stand on:

Tell a captivating story

Tell a story! — I bet you’ve heard this one before, but it’s so important I have got to repeat it again.

- Humanity loves to binge on stories — Movies, Soaps, Sitcoms, Documentaries, Ads, Novels, tragedies, and your boss’ broken marriage are all stories.

They either help us to overcome obstacles, move us from rags to riches, Have a quest we must achieve, take us on a perilous voyage, give us new beginnings, swamp us in a tragedy or make us laugh.

Our brains love stories, if you don’t believe it, ask your auditory and temporal cortex — parts of your brain responsible for hearing and language — every time you read or listen to a story they get activated. — You really want to activate your reader’s Cortex- believe me!

Your reader is busy! — checking emails, dodging pop up messages, responding to flirty Facebook posts, Whatsapping their ex, Posting Instagram photos, — catching up on yesterday’s work, or doing what you are doing right now — skimming over this article!

Enough of winded tales, real quick — let’s help you skim through!

• Rules — Break them!
• Lead — write a great Lede!
• Write tight, write right!
• Quotes — use them — Sparingly!
• Spice up — use adverbs and adjectives!
• Verbosity — Run!
• Paragraphs — craft them!
• Practice — and Practice some more!

If you were skimming, I really loved your company, but I understand you must go. Serious readers who love digging for wisdom nuggets — Here we go:

Rules — Break them!

Rules shouldn’t be broken. But grammar rules can be broken. Every writer has heard this one before. All writers try to break rules — Disastrously sometimes.

Starting a sentence with- But like I just did, is a grammatical rule broken. Because the rules say; — And, However, and Therefore should never start a sentence. But they just did — And, you aren’t complaining, are you?

Fragmented sentences like in the first paragraph above, will make your grammar teacher cringe, but they mirror informal speech — they COMMUNICATE to real people.

Breaking rules is exciting — No one reads a boring article;

Because it’s no small matter gobbling up dull words.

And as she gets more and more pop-ups, your reader reads less and less.

Therefore let your writing tingle, shock her to keep reading.

I bet you noticed what I did with these sentences. Final word, You are writing to be read — Go break some rules! We’ll love the blooms of your labor- And of course, gleefully enjoy them!

Remember;

Great writers break rules for effect. But, you must first learn the rules, master them. You can’t break rules you haven’t mastered. Words, sentences, and phrases are like ingredients in a recipe. Manipulate them to create a delightful buffet for your reader.

Lead — write a great Lede!

‘The surgeon collapsed, he’d suffered a massive heart attack…the scalpel in his hand…’

Want to grab your readers’ eyeballs? Lead with a great Lede! Every Journalist knows this — A great Lede gets your readers’ juices flowing. Write it at the beginning. A buried Lede will do you no good.

Here are some rules of writing a great Lede:

Make it Short, snappy, and catchy — thirty to forty words is perfect. Convey the main point of your story. — His blood was splattered on the white…’

Make it interesting — shocking — Yes, Dull, No! — A naked woman howling as she holds the head of her dead dog!- will do just fine.

‘They met at eight, had tea at ten, took a one-hour lunch break…’ — Anyone reading this will run for the hills.- ‘It was pandemonium, a few minutes before the lunch break, the meeting broke up in disarray…’ is a better way of getting attention — readers hate chronology.

Great movies start with action — Your Lede should be Action packed! — ‘The bullet wound was rotting, white maggots crawled, feasting, the stench..’ You get the idea.

Lastly, you know — ‘dead men lying quietly in their tombs tell no tales, walking zombies,’ on the other hand, get attention — Write about unexpected events- something out of the ordinary.

Write tight, write right!

This I must show and not tell — ‘Baby ate Pork’ — is better than ‘The fat baby ate pork steak’- ‘ Her baby chewed pork’ is even better- Focus your writing. Abide by the S-V-O (Subject Verb Object) rule — Yes I know I said; break the rules — Try not to break this one.

Here is a little writing secret journalists keep close to their chests — They invert pyramids — not the pyramids of Egypt, ***…

The inverted pyramid is a writing format — start with what’s heavy in the story, proceed to the mundane.

Quotes — use them, sparingly!

Writing that is heavy on quotes will inspire the writer — The rest of us readers just want fresh insights — Quote someone who said something interesting in an interesting way — paraphrase them for your readers’ sake — own the quote.

Sharp-eyed readers know we are at the end of this article — the pyramid just got leaner! — And discerning readers know I have only covered four points — four more to go…

Telling you to read the next article is a cliche’ — I won’t,- but of course, I really would love you to…!