#staryacademy ✍️RECREATE A SCENE, DON’T DESCRIBE IT Your reader will experience the reality of a setting only if you have experienced it for yourself, even if only in your imagination. If you are writing about your first day at school, you need to return there in your memory and see the red plastic chairs, and smell the Plasticine and gravy, and hear the sound of a boy crying for his mother. Revisiting the past may be uncomfortable, but if you want a setting with depth, you need to go into the discomfort. Recreate a scene, don’t describe it. Inhabit it, don’t write around it. Once you have set the scene in your own mind, then you can be more conceptual, talking about your feelings and the thoughts you were having. Only then will words like ‘classroom’, ‘afraid’, ‘why is that boy crying?’ really hit home with the reader. What the reader is seeking to do is vicariously experience what you are evoking: excitement in a thriller; romance in a love story; tangibility in terms of the setting. If you want to communicate this experience fully, the readers will, in effect, have to sit in the red plastic chair with you. This means supplying them with sensory clues so they can make it real for themselves. As simple as that. We can’t communicate something which the readers haven’t already experienced. Try describing ‘blue’ to a blind person. The way verbal communication works is by supplying clues which set off a process within readers, in effect reminding them of something they have already experienced. In this way, they will be able to think themselves into your skin because they will compare your experience with something similar to their own. Even if we’ve never sat in a red plastic chair, most of us know ‘red’, ‘plastic’ and ‘chair’. Source: Writing a Novel and Getting Published by Nigel Watts

#staryacademy 4 Pressure Points to Reveal Characters As we mentioned before, compelling characters are always those who are put under pressure. Forcing characters out of their comfort zone is every writer's job. Let’s look at some pressure points: 1. TEMPTATION Dangling something your character covets in front of them and then showing the inner struggle as they either accept or reject the offering is not just a way to develop the plot. Temptation will create a window into their inner strength (or weakness), shows cognitive reasoning, and reveals their values and moral beliefs. Will the character give in? Does this situation cause their moral ground to tremble? Does it show their thought process as they vacillate between giving in and staying strong? Temptation should always pressure a character and show the war going on inside them as they reach a decision. 2. CHALLENGES Throwing a big challenge your character’s way, especially when it comes with high stakes, can force them to think on their feet and marshal their strengths so that their best qualities rise up. Succeed or fail, how a character behaves under pressure will say a lot about who they are at their core. 3. SUCCESS AND FAILURE Based on the outcome of a challenge, success or failure will create a second pressure point. If successful, confidence will swell and the euphoria rush often prods them to take on further challenges as they realize they were stronger and more capable than they previously believed. If they fail, it forces reflection, bringing their shortcoming and flaws to light as well as the realization that they must change or adapt in some way to see a better outcome. 4. REDEMPTION This pressure point is another valuable contributor to both story and character development. Any character who fails (either themselves or others) will see stakes in a new light moving forward and the challenge becomes personal. To avoid another negative outcome, their passion and determination flares as they seek to prove that they are up to the task, and therefore worthy. This desire for achievement opens them to change in ways that will help them tackle a problem or crisis from a place of strength. Which one is your favorite? Do you have other pressure points to share? Source: writersinthestormblog.com