Confession: I love to read, but when I come across huge paragraphs that are nothing but setting description, I tend to scan over them. Occasionally, I’ll go back and reread it because I feel guilty–the author took time in describing all those details for a reason and I feel bad for skimming over them–but they tend to bore me and slow down the action.
That being said, I know how important they are. I fully plan on going through my entire WIP once my first draft is completed to add in setting details, but at this stage, I haven’t been filling in too much. Sure, I’ve added details that are important to the scene and set up plot points, but just adding details for the sake of the image, not so much in this draft. Until this week.
On my sidebar, you’ll see the The Bookshelf Muse listed. This is an AMAZING blog by Author Angela Ackerman that not only has an Emotional Thesaurus (which I use at least every other day for ideas) but a Setting Thesaurus, too! I always knew this was here, and have used it occasionally to get the creative juices flowing for those few scenes I added details to before, but this past week I had two scenes that I really wanted setting details to help drive the story, and I used this resource more fully.
And WOW! I did use it to jog my own ideas–so I came up with some unique descriptions, too–but what a RICH resource. Thank you, Angela!
Onto this week’s stats:
Current Word Count: 25,395! I wrote two additional scenes–working on the third biggie I mentioned in last week’s goals today–but also had fun going back in and using my search function to replace boring verbs with stronger verbs I found through my reading. I knew intellectually that finding one strong verb could replace a few, but watching it happen in my own writing has been fun. And many of these strong verbs are words I use in every day conversation or hear often, I just didn’t think of them at the time (no crazy stilted words or anything, this is a first person YA book so can’t be too hoity toity LOL). A special thank you shout out to Mom for continuing to email strong verbs she thinks of or comes across in her own reading 🙂
Little Hints: Food is described often in my book. The girls’ mom is a caterer, my main character is not one of those ‘salad eaters’–she enjoys a good meal and has a love affair with chocolate–and I have a teenage boy who is hungry often. So, needless to say, I have a tendency to get hungry myself when writing these details 🙂
Soundtrack Song of the Week: Let’s Get Loud by Jennifer Lopez. This is a fun song I play when I have a scene with just the girls in various girl bonding type moments. It brings me back to my college days, jamming out in my car with friends, blaring this song. I dare you to listen to it and not dance! My girls love when I put this on because Mommy gets really silly, which of course they imitate. (As always, email subscribers click through on the link to watch it on my blog since it doesn’t want to include itself in emails, grr)
Writing or Editing Trick Used This Week That Worked Particularly Well:
I would say the Setting Details really worked well, along with having my handy dandy handmade list of Strong Verbs full of words for emotions and movement (to replace boring smiles, laughing, walking, running, etc)
Personal High: Filling myself with inspiration by reading some really great books this week! Yesterday around 2:00 I finally got my pre-ordered copy of Lauren Kate’s Torment, which I finished last night around midnight (yep all 452 pages). I also read the books I mentioned yesterday, so that makes 5 different authors in the past week and a half, filled with different voices and styles that filled my creative tank.
Personal Low: I don’t know if I really had a low this week except for not quite getting that third scene from last week’s goal completed for today’s post, but we had a wonderful visit with family this weekend and I am happy with what I did write.
Writing Goal For the Coming Week: Finish the biggie scene and complete two more–and darn, one is a date scene at a place similar to Dave and Busters, so looks like my husband and I might just have to have a date night for inspiration! I think I am going to go for 3 scenes a week, which would have me finished sometime in December.
What about you? What are your goals for the week? Anything particularly work — OR not work– this week?
HAPPY WRITING!
