Scat your prose! No-no…not rat scat, bat scat, cat scat – not THAT kind of scat. You know, jazz scat. Ella Fitzgerald type (or to put it in the modern idiom, Pentatonix – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn3Zkq9PP_Y ). Scat your prose, only instead of vocalizing instruments, go for the rhythms and rhymes and alliteration – the repetitions or poetic effects. Just read your stuff aloud and put some music into your voice! Let it flow, let it flow, let it flow…hear that? Did you let the word flow FLOW-WWW? Did you triple down the repetition so that it cascaded like water? Well, that’s the difference between language that reads like a shop manual from Taiwan and the exquisite writing of a wordsmythe. The latter fashion stories that engage you not just with things & events but with the meaning, the emotional tone and the spirit behind them. The music. The poetry. The insights. The beauty and the soul.
Pity the half of the world that is tone deaf to that. Srsly. Roughly that many of us function at a mere literal level, grasping little beyond “and then and then and then…” as a story unfolds. Nothing wrong with that – God bless the popcorn readers. I do try to connect with them at the same time that I write for the other half. It doesn’t always work. Literal readers suspect I’m doing something behind the scenes, but they aren’t sure what. At best it annoys them and at worst it makes them uneasy about themselves. Sorry for that. Don’t mean to be condescending or effete or obscure for the sake of being obscure. Simplicity really is a virtue. But the simplest song is probably a Gregorian chant or a Buddhist “Ommm.” And when is the last time that topped the Billboard charts?
We speak or write to be understood, but there are grunts and scribbles and then there are communications layered with expressions of the heart, mind and soul. Somewhere between those two extremes is a line you cross as both a reader and a writer that separates the literal black-and-white story from an enchanting Technicolor universe. Communicating on the literal side of the line is like taking a vitamin pill: you get the nutrients but you never savor the flavor. Dining on the other side of the line will jangle your taste buds. There you will digest a 4-course meal that connects the dots of experience, insight and nuanced patterns. I try to cross that Rubicon. If I can convey the literal and still invest the description and characterization with some unobtrusive wit, beauty and wisdom, the story has a chance to reach out beyond narrowness and clichés. It’s never an unqualified win for any writer, however. You will always lose some readers just by rewarding others. Different strokes for different folks. >>READ MORE
