Hello again and welcome back. I hope your week is seeing you well. I'm sorry this post is a little late, but an appointment that I couldn't avoid happened this morning, and it was a long one. I start my new position tomorrow, so the post for Friday may end up being a bit later in the day, but I still do my best to get it done before I go in.
Today I wanted to talk about exposition in your work. This is a spiral that a lot of authors get sucked into without even realizing it and it takes a lot of work to get out. What I'm talking about are the details. I was caught in this myself and it has taken practice and focus to make sure that I don't go overboard, especially since my works tend to fall on the longer side. Details are important, but going crazy with them is only going to make things drag on for a bit longer than is necessary. I'm not talking about cutting all your sentences down to be short and concise; sometimes giving a good amount of detail is necessary, but it's how you present it that's going to make the difference in the end.
The place people get stuck with this is during dialogue. At first glance the temptation is to give your description, followed by dialogue, and then go from there. The thing that you need to remember is that humans tend to accentuate whatever they're saying with hand motions, body language, and other such things. The key is to take those elements and use them to help bring the environment to life a bit more. I'm not saying don't give any details of the area the characters are in, I'm saying give what you think is needed to give the reader an idea of what they're dealing with and let the character's actions help that along.
This is the point where technical writing and creative writing join together. Now I've never considered myself a technical writer, and it's entirely possible that I'm way off in my thinking, so if that's the case I apologize. However, technical writing is about being efficient, concise, and still getting the point across in a way the reader understands. The aspects of creative writing is making a world and characters your own, and it's when you join creative and technical writing that you truly get the magic going.
I appreciate everyone for stopping by today to check things out. Like I said I will be doing my normal Friday post, I just can't gurantee the time. I would also like to say thanks to anyone who helped spread the word about the Smashwords Summer Sale that ended as of yesterday. I'll see what I can do about making a new coupon later either this month or possibly September (yay birthday sale!) so keep your eyes open for that. For now I wish everyone a fun and safe rest of your week!
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