Scene and Structure

Writing each day comes up on every list on every website regarding how to learn to write.  Doing so makes good sense too.  Practice like that parallels ones thinking regarding walking and exercise.  You need to continuously put one foot in front of the other to stay in shape.  So I write daily.

I search for more instructions on writing too because writing day in and day out isn’t all I should be doing to get better.  I imbue my writing when I can with practical advice that makes sense to me.  Finding that advice has not been easy.  I have discard many of the tips I uncover before even using them.  The one recently coming to mind is to write short sentences when you want to convey hurried action.  I imagine a fight scene: Bob punches Sam.  Sam ducks.  Sam punches back. Punch. Duck. Duck. Punch.  Bob falls to the ground.  Maybe doing so works, but the technique comes across as a hack more akin to opening a locked door with a crowbar than a tool like a key or slim-jim.

Other sites hang you up in the minutia of understanding the difference between your and you’re or affect and effect.  Fine, I don’t want to look like an ass any more than the rest of you do but knowing when to use then and when to use than only polishes off a burr.  It doesn’t add.  It doesn’t embellish.

Last Wednesday I went to a local writers’ meeting.  The group definition made it out to be a subset of writers, but the attendees seemed broad enough in interests to me to warrant removing the subtitle and just calling the group writers.  One gentleman whose name I didn’t commit to memory recommended an author who had written several books on the structure of writing.  I ordered one from Amazon Thursday.  It arrived Tuesday.  And I am pleased on Wednesday.

Day 396