This giveaway is over.
As a reader, you may also love to write. I have written for as long as I can remember, and have taken several creative writing classes. But the single most important thing I did to improve my writing was to become a more active reader.
Now, whenever I read a book, whether curled up in a chair or in bed before I go to sleep (my nightly ritual), I have my green 3 ring binder handy. When I come across a phrase or description that is beautiful, unique, interesting, I stop, and try to take something away from it. For example, in describing a first kiss, it’s so easy to write “she had butterflies in her stomach”.
The reader immediately knows how the character is feeling. But when a writer falls back on clichés, the writer is telling the reader the information. It is much harder, but far more effective, to find a new way to convey the mood or emotion. Consider how J.K. Rowling describes Harry’s first kiss in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix:
“He could not think. A tingling sensation was spreading throughout him, paralyzing his arms, legs, and brain.”
When a writer effectively uses a fresh way to describe something, I stop and try to come up with my own way to express it – which I scribble down. Now when I’m writing – and I use it even more often during re-writes -- I have my notebook with me, and I reference it often.
This system also works for descriptive words -- I jot down adjectives and verbs I like. In the back of the notebook I have a few pages devoted just to action verbs. How many times can I write ran, darted, bolted... ? But now I can quickly look and find thundered, side-stepped, squeezed, pranced, trundled along...
Recently I’ve focused more on character descriptions, and again, I will refer to the incredible J.K. Rowling. A trick she sometimes uses is to compare her characters to animals. For example, in The Half-Blood Prince, she compares Rufus Scrimgeour to an old lion (his name even sounds lion-like!) She writes:
“There were streaks of gray in his mane of tawny hair and his bushy eyebrows; he had keen yellowish eyes behind a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles and a certain rangy, loping grace even though he walked with a slight limp…”
What a fabulous introduction to the new Minister of Magic! The reader can easily conjure up Scrimgeour in their minds, and we also know that he is a commanding presence by the very fact that she compares him to a lion.
So if you like to write, try to become a more active reader; jot things down that pique your interest. And even if you don’t write, I find that when I notice the nuances of a book more closely, I often enjoy it more (although I will warn you -- it does take longer to read it!)
Erin Cashman grew up in Framingham, Massachusetts. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Bates College in Maine and from Boston College Law School. She lives in Massachusetts with my husband, three children, and their dog. The Exceptionals is her first novel.
In a famous family of exceptionally talented people, fifteen-year-old Claire Walker is ordinary . . . or so she leads everyone to believe. Yet the minute she steps out of line, her parents transfer her to Cambial Academy: the prestigious boarding school that her great-grandfather founded for students with supernatural abilities, or “specials”. Although Claire can’t see ghosts or move objects with her mind like the other students, she does have a special she considers too lame to admit: she can hear the thoughts of animals.
Just as she is settling in, one by one the most talented students – the Exceptionals – go missing. In an attempt to find out what happened to them, Claire uncovers a dark prophecy involving a plot to destroy Cambial and a mysterious girl who can communicate with a hawk. Could she be that girl? Does the gorgeous but secretive boy she meets in the woods know more than he is letting on? After years of ignoring her special gift, Claire decides the time has come to embrace her ability... before it’s too late.
Want to win a copy of Erin Cashman's The Exceptionals? Just fill out the form below!
Quick Recap:
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