Writing Tips

As a writer, I read with a hungry eye. I search for writing styles that hook me. An unusual, suspenseful plot can keep me turning pages, but when a book grabs my heart, I take notes.

Author Lauren Wolk inspires me with her descriptive writing. It isn’t slushy, but crisp. She writes just enough description to light my imagination so that I see and experience the scenes. How does she do it?

1. Details

Wolk makes details pop, often by using clipped sentences before description. Here’s an example from her latest book Echo Mountain.

But then I stopped.

Looked back.

And there, on the cabin’s broad granite step, a wooden pail brimming with cold water, waiting to be useful.

• Sensory words

In the above example, broad and brimming are specific sight words. Wolk adds the textures granite and wooden so the reader unconsciously feels and touches the step and pail. Last, she lets the reader feel the cold water. Wolk corrals words to capture sight, touch, taste, sound and smell throughout her book.

• Deep Point of View

“Show don’t tell” ignites scenes, and Wolk weaves characters’ emotions into their actions. The paragraph below follows a dramatic scene in which a girl plunges a stillborn puppy into a bucket of water until the shock of cold water brings it to life.

I sat on the step and dried the pup on my shirttail, roughing up his slick pelt, which made him breathe harder—which made me breathe harder, too, a series of sighs, as if we’d both been starved for air.  (Echo Mountain)

Wolk doesn’t state the girl’s tension and relief, but I felt it and breathed it with her.

• Surprising description

Strong writing teeters on poetry when the author chooses words that don’t seem to fit but jar the reader to experience the scene. Wolk writes:

I picked up the tangle of laundry…

…an old woman lay there, her face so pale it melted into the pillow

I touched her old-apple face.

…the pale spill of morning light.

As you read, take notes. When pages come to life, linger and gather tools for your own writing. And please, share a snippet from a book or your writing in the comments below. I’m still hungry…

Happy writing & reading,

Gretchen Carlson

email: gretchencarlsonwriter@gmail.com  website: https://gretchen-carlson.com/

Photo credit: Angelina Litvin https://unsplash.com/@linalitvina