Creative Writing Building Blocks
Samantha Kolber, MFA, shares some tips & guidelines for using literary devices as the building blocks to make your creative writing soar!
“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
As Chekhov pointed out in the quote above, it is a good idea to use language that shows, rather than tells, in your creative writing.
Showing (dialogue, action, description) is the cornerstone for constructing creative work.
Images are the building blocks of both fiction and creative nonfiction, including poetry.
Details are the lifeblood of good writing—for both fiction and creative nonfiction. And not just any details, but concrete details, or details that are grounded in the five senses.
When you describe something, keep in mind the five senses, and use as many as possible to describe your object, place, or person; what does it Look, Sound, Smell, Taste, and Feel like?
Literary Devices: Using literary devices can create more involved descriptions that convey emotions. Here are some devices at your disposal:
Personification – giving human characteristics, behaviors or feelings to objects.
ex: The thunder roared and the wind slapped me in the face.
Simile – A comparison of two unlike things using “like” or “as.”
ex: My father is like a ghost.
Metaphor – Figurative language in which two unlike things are directly compared or linked (uses “is” rather than “like” or “as”).
ex: My father is a ghost.
Alliteration – The repetition of a sound at the beginning of two or more neighboring words.
ex: He had a wild, wandering way about him.
Onomatopoeia - Words that are or imitate the sounds they make.
ex: The soda went pop as I twisted the cap; I took a gulp.
What Parts of Writing Show?
Dialogue, words spoken between characters, or even aloud to oneself if there is one character.
Actions and reactions among characters.
Basic objective descriptions of objects or settings, like if you took a photograph or video of a scene, what would you see/hear/feel?
-The Making of a Story (205)
When something is shown, the reader is an eyewitness to the events of the story, novel, or essay, through the use of dialogue (what characters say), and action (what characters do or have done to them). Think about how a piece of writing could be performed, or dramatized, on a stage. Action and dialogue shows the scene and keeps a reader engaged. Showing gives the reader concrete evidence of what is happening.
Example of Showing: The woman sat at the kitchen table and cried and cried into a soggy tissue. “I can’t do it anymore, Ron,” she sobbed into the phone. “I’m too sick from the chemo and I can’t take care of the kids.” She swiped under her nose with her forearm using her sweatshirt sleeve to wipe away the snot. She pressed the phone to the side of her face and said the hardest thing she’d ever had to say, even harder than telling the kids about the cancer. “They’ll have to go live with you now.”
What Parts of Writing Tell?
Summarizing what happened.
Saying the time of day, year, or fiddling with the clock of a piece by moving the reader back or forward in time w/o showing the scenes of how to get there.
History of background information.
Explanations or definitions.
Thoughts or emotions of the characters (ideas) or narrator.
Analysis or commentary on what is happening.
-The Making of a Story (205-206)
Same example using Telling: She told him she was sick and dying of cancer and that the kids would need to go live with him now.
Notice what the addition of dialogue and action, with the woman wiping her nose and snot and speaking, does to the piece. Which one stays with you? The image of the woman crying on the phone, or the sentence about the woman who was sick and told her ex to take the kids?
Which bring us to Imagery:
It is in the Images we use to Show the action and dialogue that you want to make concrete and clear and detailed so that it sticks with the reader.
Image is defined in The Making of a Story as “Anything that has been rendered by any one (or more) of the five senses” (644). An image in literary context means that we try and reproduce a person, place, or thing in as solid form as we can: Not just visually, but also hearing, smelling, touching, tasting. Creative writing is more than painting pictures on the page with words – it is also showing how a form exists in the world in all sensory modes.
It is taking something abstract and giving it a specific image and form. Using details can take a passive, general telling of something into an active, specific showing.
Examples of the difference of being general and abstract vs. specific and detailed:
General / Abstract: She had a drinking problem.
Specific / Details: Three times a week she opened a bottle of wine, not even chilled, and drank it from a coffee cup until it was dry. She brought the cup into the bathroom and would continue sipping even as she brushed her teeth.
General / Abstract: Time stood still.
Specific / Details: I became aware of my own heartbeat in my chest, my pulse throbbing in my ears. I could hear the ticking of the hands of the clock, which got slower and slower until I wondered if the clock needed new batteries. Would the end of class never come?
Both of those examples basically take a “telling” sentence and turn it into a “showing” sentence by use of concrete details and images. Notice how when you show something specific with details, you don’t need to say what it is. You don’t need to say “she had a drinking problem” if you show it well enough.
So, back to that question of when to show versus when to tell:
According to Alice LaPlante in The Making of a Story, creative writers should show the important stuff: behaviors, interactions, and speeches that are important to your character(s) and plot. Anything that changes the situation of the story or essay in any significant way should be shown to the reader in “eyewitness” mode (213). Eyewitness mode is like watching a movie – scenes happen in action and with dialogue. Like watching the woman with the drinking problem bring her mug of wine into the bathroom.
Remember this formula when writing:
Showing + Telling + Images + Concrete Details = Engaging Creative Writing
(Of course, there are many more elements of creative writing, like point of view, plot, stakes and character, to name a few, but Showing, Telling, Images, and Concrete Details really are the basic building blocks).
Also, the goal is to use concrete images and details along with intense emotions and insight. But you shouldn’t have to say exactly what the emotion is. Let the reader feel it from the detailed description.
Two examples of using similes to describe an object, one from a person in love, and one from a person who just got dumped:
The rose is as red as my sweetheart’s lips.
The rose is as red as a laser beam I’d use to cut his heart.
Notice how no feelings are named, but reading the first sentence you think, aw, a person in love, and the second one you think, oh no, a person has been scorned.
Can you write your own metaphors and similes? Use them in your writing to help show your characters and the setting in unique ways. Metaphors and similes give more layers of meaning to any piece of writing.
Works Cited and Writing References:
Burroway, Janet. Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft. Fifth ed. New York: Longman, 2000. Print.
LaPlante, Alice. The Making of a Story: A Norton Guide to Creative Writing. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007. Print.