Starting With A Clean Sheet

Spring. Finally.

It’s Spring! And the urge to clean and declutter comes over many of us. I’ve already made one run to the dump, and there will be more, along with side trips to the Sally Ann with surplus household items. This may possibly include rooster – themed dessert plates and tablecloths from well-meaning kin who thought my appetite for rooster collectables is limitless. It isn’t.

Today was a sunny delight after a long winter. I ran some sheets through the wash and hung them out to dry on the line. Nothing gives a new start to the week so much as clean sheets that have dried in fresh spring air.

A slogfest

Same goes with writing. I sit and stare at that fresh sheet of paper. So many little pieces of information go into everything we write. Sometimes writers don’t even know what they know, what tiny blossoms of inspiration lie under a thin veneer of snow. Information finds its way into the subconscious through direct and indirect means, and can add so much interesting depth and detail to what we write.

But it can also get to be too much, turning the delivery of a great plot into a slogfest through overwrought prose.

Paid by the word

I just finished two very different mysteries this week. Both from  successful series in which the  main character solves the murder. One had great details that vividly painted the people, place and time it was set in, and a clever twisty plot. However, the author kept the heroine repeating her inner dialogues over and over til I found myself not only impatient, but fed up. I started longing for any character but her to make an appearance. The author made me feel she was getting paid by the word.

In contrast, the second mystery, while also written from a first – person POV, moved along smartly. Characters were also fully developed; nothing was lost in the settings, dialogue and plot. Yet the prose was pruned cleanly: there was no rehashing the same speculations ad nauseum. At about a third the length of the first novel, the prose was energetic and tantalizing. There were great plot twists. What was going to happen next?

(Guess which author’s next installment I’ll be reading?)

Prose as clean as sheets

All this is to say, I love minutiae; I adore learning new facts and reading about characters with cool skills and super powers. But discovering this author has  inspired me to try to emulate a clearer style of writing. I’ve come away with a fresh resolve to write something someone like me would want to read.

I want to create prose as clean as sheets set out to dry in the fresh spring wind.