For Christians new to writing novels for kids and teens. Creative writing tips, encouragement and inspiration from Janet Wilson, writer, speaker, and publisher of Christian fiction for young people. Get ready to take your writing to the next level! You can do it - all you need is a bit of help. Don't miss out!
Oh, and do leave a review on your podcast app - it really does help a lot. Thank you! :-)
SPEAKER_00
Hello and welcome to the Write for a Reason podcast. My name is Janet Wilson. I'm a publisher with Derner Publishing. We produce Christian books for kids and teens. If you are a Christian writing stories for young people, this is just a podcast for you, and I hope you will find this writing tip helpful. It's all about descriptions in our emails. We've been looking at descriptions all the way through kind of the summer and autumn, maybe August or September, I can't remember exactly, but we've had a lot of fun with descriptions, and of course these are essential to get right because if you've got your descriptions right, you are taking your readers right there with you. So here are just uh a few little tips, some things that we've been looking at, which I hope you'll find helpful. So the first one is make sure you're describing things from your narrator's point of view, that it is making sense and it's congruent with your perspective, with your point of view. So this may be your protagonist if you're writing in the first person, it may not be if you're writing in the third person, and if you have no idea what I'm talking about, you probably need to join the Right for a Reason Academy. So again, hop on over to rightforreason.com and have a look at that. Tip number two, use all the senses plus lots of colour. I know I say this a lot, but it really is important. So not just what uh your protagonist can see or what your narrator can see around your protagonist, your your characters, but also what they can hear, what they can smell. Perhaps they might be touching the bark or something smooth, possibly something to eat as well. Children do love that, don't they? So all the senses use them in there, and lots of colours. The better your description of the place where your character is, the more likely you are to be taking your readers right there with you, very close beside your protagonists. So perhaps they might be wearing red gloves, perhaps there are some seagulls going overhead, perhaps they might be chomping on a sandwich as they're walking along, and the stomping of their feet on the path might echo around. These are all the kind of things that are going to bring your readers in close to the novel. The idea is that if it's raining in your novel, uh you've got that sound of the rain, you've got the trickle going down the uh the back of your protagonist's collar perhaps, or dripping on their forehead, you've got the sound of it dripping off the trees, all sorts of things like that that you can bring in and have a lot of fun with. So if your reader is reading on a beautiful sunny day, but it is like stormy and tipping it with rain, if you've described that really well, they may look up and be surprised that it's not raining outside in the real world. That's what we're kind of aiming for. So use all the senses and lots of colour. Next tip add atmosphere that's congruent with the story. So your protagonists may be stomping along if they're angry, they may be skipping along if they're really happy and feeling blessed, they may be just walking along carefully thinking about things, looking down, not looking around them. So with your descriptions, you can bring in a lot of atmosphere. Right, I think we're on to tip number four. So this one is a little bit of a tricky one, and you're gonna have to think about this one really carefully, but don't make your descriptions too long and don't make your descriptions too short. So only you can work this one out. It will depend entirely on your target audience, who it is that you're writing for, do you just need a couple of words, or do you need a sentence or two? Or perhaps in some parts of the novel you need to go in more heavily with the description, perhaps in a slower part, perhaps you're building up some intrigue and some suspense, perhaps your characters are sitting in the clearing of a wood, waiting for somebody to go past them, um, in which case you can do a great job on the description there. Or if you've got a piece in your novel which is much more fast-paced, you may not want much of a description in there. Just the rushing of the wind and uh the sound of footsteps behind them might be enough, and that might be all that you need. So yeah, don't make your descriptions too long or too short and vary them throughout your novel. I've already hinted at uh this next tip. Always keep your target readers in mind as you write, so it will be just right for them. You're probably aware, if you've listened to this podcast before, of the one reader idea. So if you're writing for one particular reader or a group of readers, if you're not familiar with that, have a think about them as you're writing. Will this description be just right for them? Will they understand it? Will it make sense? It's not too dark, is it, for them, for the age group they are? Or maybe it's not quite dark enough and you need to bring in uh something a little bit heavier for your target readers. Only you will again know that. And if you're not sure about the one reader technique, yeah, once more hop on over to rightforeason.com and look up the Right for Reason Academy. So the next tip, I think this is number six. Use strong words. So for example, if something is green, think of your huge choice of words that you have for green. Olive green, emerald green, and then if you've got something like cute, perhaps you could use a stronger word for cute. Maybe it's a kitten and it's adorable. So there's a lot of things that you can you can do to make your vocabulary stand out and give a better picture. Immense instead of big. You know the kind of thing I mean. So whenever you've got a description, why not have a look back and see if you can use a better or stronger word? Okay, now we're on to show not tell. Uh don't tell us how rough the wood is, give your protagonist a splinter. Then you've shown us. Uh if you need help with show not tell, uh there's lots of information available on the Rightfor Reason website, and uh there's a bonus feature in the Rightfor Reason Academy as well. Right, uh that's my seven tips on descriptions for you, and I hope that is useful. As always, don't forget to share your descriptions with me, I'd love to hear from you. If you'd like lots more free creative writing tips, hop on over to rightforreason.com. You'll find loads more resources and encouragement to help you write excellent, relevant, fun novels and get them into your readers' hands. If you haven't yet done my free course, Gripping Beginnings, you can sign up and start immediately, and this will help you grip your readers from the very first page of your story. We also have a membership group, and I'd love for you to join us. We have a great time. So don't put your writing off. Today is a gift to use wisely. Only you can write your book, and if you've been called to write, someone is waiting for it.
