Writing Style...

A kind reviewer, via Goodreads, mentioned that she liked my 'writing style' and this prompted me to blog a post concerning 'The Voice' of an author. Further down, I've provided links to websites with more information. Enjoy. :o) 

A writer's style is what sets his or her writing apart and makes it unique. Style is the way writing is dressed up (or down) to fit the specific context, purpose, or audience. Word choice, sentence fluency, and the writer's voice — all contribute to the style of a piece of writing.
In fiction writing, the style must represent the author's personal expression of these events that comprise the plot; setting the mood, and leading the reader to a subjective, non-literal, emotional understanding of the subject.

How a writer chooses words and structures sentences to achieve a certain effect is also an element of style. When Thomas Paine wrote “These are the times that try men’s souls,” he arranged his words to convey a sense of urgency and desperation. Had he written “These are bad times,” it’s likely he wouldn’t have made such an impact!
Style is usually considered to be the province of literary writers. Novelists such as Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner and poets such as Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman are well known for their distinctive literary styles.

Elements of style

Many elements of writing contribute to an author’s style, but three of the most important are word choice, sentence fluency, and voice.
WORD CHOICE
Good writers are concise and precise, weeding out unnecessary words and choosing the exact word to convey meaning. Precise words — active verbs, concrete nouns, specific adjectives — help the reader visualize the sentence. Good writers use adjectives sparingly and adverbs rarely, letting their nouns and verbs do the work.
Good writers also choose words that contribute to the flow of a sentence. Polysyllabic words, alliteration, and consonance can be used to create sentences that roll off the tongue. Onomatopoeia and short, staccato words can be used to break up the rhythm of a sentence.
SENTENCE FLUENCY
Sentence fluency is the flow and rhythm of phrases and sentences. Good writers use a variety of sentences with different lengths and rhythms to achieve different effects. They use parallel structures within sentences and paragraphs to reflect parallel ideas, but also know how to avoid monotony by varying their sentence structures.
Good writers also arrange their ideas within a sentence for greatest effect. They avoid loose sentences, deleting extraneous words and rearranging their ideas for effect. Many students initially write with a looser oral style, adding words on to the end of a sentence in the order they come to mind. This rambling style is often described as a “word dump” where everything in a student’s mind is dumped onto the paper in no particular order. There is nothing wrong with a word dump as a starting point: the advantage of writing over speaking is that writers can return to their words, rethink them, and revise them for effect. Tighter, more readable style results when writers choose their words carefully, delete redundancies, make vague words more specific, and use subordinate clauses and phrases to rearrange their ideas for the greatest effect.
VOICE
Because voice is difficult to measure reliably, it is often left out of scoring formulas for writing tests. Yet voice is an essential element of style that reveals the writer’s personality. A writer’s voice can be impersonal or chatty, authoritative or reflective, objective or passionate, serious or funny.

Source  HERE

Tone vs. Voice

Anything you write should still have your voice: something that makes your writing sound uniquely like you. A personal conversation with a friend differs from a speech given to a large group of strangers. Just as you speak to different people in different ways yet remain yourself, so the tone of your writing can vary with the situation while the voice -- the essential, individual thoughts and expression -- is still your own.

Links:
1. A Simple Exercise to Find Your Writing Style ~ HERE
2. What’s Your Creative Writing Style? Tips for Developing Your Voice ~ HERE
It can take years for a writer to develop a stylistic voice. Some writers have a natural voice. Others work at crafting a unique voice with a particular tone or attitude. And plenty of writers don’t think about voice at all. But voice is a key element of writing since it represents you as a writer and can help readers connect with your work. For example, some readers will be turned off by a sarcastic tone whereas others may be drawn to it.

Creative Writing ~ HERE

I don't think about 'voice' when writing, but I am aware of tone. In general, I feel reality, day-to-day tasks require a different form (tone) of self and I usually need to get into that 'writing-mode' before I put any words down. If I didn't do this the 'tone' would be different. Does that make sense?
I block out the world and create a mental sphere (bubble) where I draw in and keep a flow of inspiration/creativity around me. Initially, I do this with images and music (headphones on). Depending on the day, it can take minutes or hours to find that balance, but once found the word count moves up. Yay! :o)

What works for you?

Are you aware of 'Voice' or 'Tone'?

 In My Bubble by Love-and-Blades

Love and light,

Trace

xoxo

Ian Irvine on writing

Had to share a wonderful couple of websites on writing with you all.

Ian Irvine

 

“A writer’s job is to give his readers pleasure …
through stress, strain and tension.” ~ Sol Stein

The essentials of successful storytelling – for popular fiction, are external conflict, inner conflict, compelling characters and sustained suspense. 

According to Maass, every hero should have “a torturous need, a consuming fear, an aching regret, a visible dream, a passionate longing, an inescapable ambition, an exquisite lust, an inner lack, a fatal weakness, an unavoidable obligation, an irresistible plan, a noble ideal, an undying hope, or whatever it is that drives him beyond the boundaries that confine us, and brings about fulfilling change.”

Relating to the characters is what makes a story real, but how does this work? Relating means making an emotional connection, and the emotions we’re feeling when we read a story are the emotions of the characters (enhanced by our own lives and experiences). What they feel, we feel. The better the story, the more we lose ourselves in the lives of the characters and the more we become them, through identification.

The Basics of Story Craft

In its purest form, a story consists of just three elements: conflict, action, and resolution (Cleaver). Someone is faced with a problem (conflict) that he must struggle to overcome (action), and he either wins or loses (resolution).

Conflict brings stories to life, though it isn’t important for what it is, but for what it does. What does it do? The answer to this question lies at the very heart of storytelling. Conflict forces characters to act in ways that reveal who they are – and nothing tells us more about characters than how they deal with their troubles.

When conflict exposes who a character really is, the reader is drawn in through identification. The more difficult the character’s choice, the more his true nature will be revealed. In great stories – Romeo and Juliet; Hamlet; Scarlett O’Hara; Frodo; Harry Potter – the heroes are forced to go all the way. The more pressure you put on your character, the more you make him reveal his true, inner self and the more powerfully your readers will identify with him.

To be forced to change, to act and reveal their innermost selves, characters need to be frustrated, desperate and at the end of their rope. The worse you make it for your characters the better it is for the reader. When the characters give all they’ve got, readers experience it deeply and powerfully.

Conflict is often misunderstood in fiction. A great story can’t be made from everyday conflict (bickering, abuse, arguments, fights etc). A great story requires dramatic conflict, that is, conflict related to the hero’s story goal – either furthering it or blocking it. A dramatic want and a dramatic obstacle are needed to create dramatic conflict.
A dramatic want arises when the character is desperate to make things change. She can’t stand this aspect of her life any longer, and has to act. If she can live with things the way they are, if she can turn away from what she wants and be no worse off, it’s a false want and will only create a false conflict.

A dramatic obstacle is one that is as determined to block or deny the want as the want is driven to deny the obstacle (Frodo is determined to take the ring to Mount Doom, Sauron is determined to stop him). If the character can ignore the obstacle and suffer no harm, it’s a false obstacle and there is no conflict, no drama, and no story.
General Ways to Create Conflict (adapted and expanded from Lukeman, The Plot Thickens).

Create inherently conflicting characters. Your characters should be sufficiently different so that, even if they’re friends or lovers, they will constantly strike sparks off each other (for instance, a deeply religious person and a gleefully atheistic sinner, a communist and a capitalist, a refined lady, and a boorish slob). When you put such characters together it creates reader anticipation about the coming conflict and its consequences. But make sure the conflict is dramatic conflict.
You can create conflicting characters in an infinite number of ways, via:

1. Opposing character traits – eg, aggressive, argumentative, a meditator, a conflict avoider;
2. Race or nationality (for instance, characters from countries or regions which traditionally hate one another);
3. Political or religious or moral or ethical views;
4. Money, social status, upbringing, education, etc

Work out the conflict potential for each of your characters (you could rate it on a scale 1-10), then tailor it to create the maximum potential for conflict with the other key characters.

Where two characters have a generally harmonious relationship, find ways to wedge them apart – for instance by giving them different goals, agendas or attitudes. You can heighten conflict in any scene by giving the people in the scene opposing goals. Raise the stakes, make the need for the goal more desperate, and the scene will come alive.

Find more HERE

A character is in inner conflict (i.e. torn in two directions at once) when he has two goals, needs, wants or desires that are mutually exclusive. He must choose between equally desirable (or undesirable) courses of action, each supported by its own inner voice (Frey, How to Write Damn Good Fiction, and Iglesias, Writing for Emotional Impact). If he chooses one, he can’t have the other (Maass, Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook). The conflicting forces don’t have to be world-shattering in themselves, but they do have to really matter to your hero.

Bring your readers to a state of total absorption by showing the storm raging inside the hero: the doubts, misgivings, second thoughts, apprehension, fear, guilt pangs, remorse, indecision, etc. Powerful conflict comes when the opposing emotions or courses of action are equally strong.

The reader now suffers the hero’s inner storm and takes sides in the painful decisions he is forced to make. It is this participation in the decision-making process, when the reader identifies with the hero’s conflicts and wants him to make one decision over another, that transports the reader – and makes the story memorable. The inner conflict creates powerful suspense because the stakes are high yet readers don’t know:

1. What the hero will do in the crisis;
2. Whether it will be a good choice or a disastrous one;
3. Either way, what the consequences will be, for him and for others.

To make the story even stronger and more compelling, give your hero multiple inner conflicts, then weave them together with the inner and external conflicts of the other key characters.

Common Behaviours Exhibited by People Suffering Inner Conflict

People suffering strong inner conflicts may (calmdownmind.com):

1. Feel physical discomfort, stress or agitation, but suppress or deny it;
2. Do what they ought to do rather than what they really want or need;
3. Struggle to make decisions, and doubt the decisions they have made;
4. Be uncertain about what they want from life;
5. Be easily influenced by others;
6. Feel guilt or shame about past behaviour or natural drives or urges;
7. Attract or be attracted to dysfunctional relationships that are rife with conflict;
8. Be unstable or volatile, especially facing some challenge;
9. Constantly seek support from others due to a lack of self-conviction;
10. Suffer sudden mood or personality changes;
11. Seek distraction via entertainment, alcohol, drugs, sex or gambling, etc.

More HERE

How to Write Love Scenes by Carolyn Campbell

A love scene can provide a satisfying ending or an enduring, effective hook that you can thread throughout the plot of a mainstream novel. Such a scene can serve as an action scene, a sequel following a scene, or it can build tension and suspense leading up to another scene. The relationship between the two characters in a love scene can add interest to the story, move the plot forward, or complicate and add tension to the story.

1. Create tension by rendering the lovers as opposing forces

2. Get involved in your love scenes

3. Keep the lovers in character

4. Raise sexual tension through conflict

5. Reveal sexual attraction through contrast

5. Build suspense, anticipation, and intensity

6. Heighten the characters' five senses

7. Reveal relationship status and character changes

8. Tantalize with temporary togetherness

9. Turn up the heat (and the speed) with touch

10. Make love a difficult choice to heighten the emotions

11. Captivate with close calls

12. Kiss your story good-bye

Another great section HERE

Polishing Your Prose: Tips on Grammar, Article & Story Structure, and Self-Editing

Writing Speculative Fiction: Fantasy, Science Fiction & Horror HERE

Fiction Writing Tips: Characters, Viewpoint, & Names HERE

Romanticism (also the Romantic era or the Romantic period) 

was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement.

William Blake

William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. His prophetic poetry has been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". His visual artistry led one contemporary art critic to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced."

 

William Sharp

William Sharp (12 September 1855 – 12 December 1905) was a Scottish writer, of poetry and literary biography in particular, who from 1893 wrote also as Fiona Macleod, a pseudonym kept almost secret during his lifetime. He was also an editor of the poetry of Ossian, Walter Scott, Matthew Arnold, Algernon Charles Swinburne and Eugene Lee-Hamilton.

Foam of the Past is the ‘selected writings’ of Sharp’s channelled pseudonym, who became a darling of Victorian readers and one earnestly courted by the fin-de-siècle ‘Celtic Twilight’ movement. This collection, includes provocative dark tales, early church musings, mystical ecritures, reveries of nature, political polemics, and various delightful vignettes. A gleaming new jewel for Scottish literature and Gaelic culture.

love and light,

Trace

xoxo

Great writing polarizes people ~ Stephen King on writing

Write as if no one in the world will ever read it.
Say exactly what you feel. Don’t think. Just get your thoughts out there in all their disheveled, chaotic glory.

This is what Stephen calls writing with the” door closed.” It’s just you and your work, nobody else, and it’s the first stage of writing.

The second stage is opening the door to the rest of the world — a metaphor for pondering how the average Joe might respond to your new creation and making the changes necessary to help it survive.

And yes, there will be changes. Lots and lots of them.

To many aspiring writers, a great piece of writing is something mystical, filled with an almost frightening power, and they look at the writers who create such magic with reverence, maybe even worship, longing for the day when they can discover their closely-guarded “secrets.”

It’s silly.

Yes, there is some magic to it, but the same magic exists in every type of art, and it’s accessible to everyone. Here’s how:

Write. Every day. For years.

Is it hard work?

Yes.

But so is any job worth doing.

“You undoubtedly have your own thoughts, interests, and concerns, and they have arisen, as mine have, from your experiences and adventures as a human being. . . . You should use them in your work.”

More HERE

love and light

Trace

xoxo

Stone Mythology

 
Picture Source ~ HERE

Have you heard of the 'Talmudic Stone Legend'?

There is a Talmudic legend about a glowing stone that Abraham wore around his neck. There are many legends about this glowing jewel known as the Tzohar, which was said to be first given to Adam and Eve when they were expelled from the Garden of Eden. The Talmudic version of the legend says that the stone was also an astrolabe, which Abraham would use to study the stars. The light emitted by this star jewel was as bright as the sun, and, at one time, illuminated the world.

Felicia Simion Photography

Amarnae

Ah...star-gazing at the magic in the sky. I love it when I'm out of the big city, look up and everything's so clear. Time to forget worries as the lustrous black curtain twinkles with promise.

Water building ~ Sakura ~ Japan

Unknown Artist

In the novel, 'A Carpet of Purple Flowers', I mention a seven-pointed star, a Septagram that the main character, Bea, wears around her neck. She isn't aware that it's a symbol representing the otherworldly elementals known as the 'Sindria'.

Inspired by the Pleiades constellation, I created the Amanara, a collective name for the seven Sindria who tend souls in a place called, Calageata.

The story of  'The lost Star', one of the Sindria, is called, Amarnae. Over the book series, the legend of Amarnae will be revealed.

Creation Story

The elements below haven't been written in the book, but there are layers to the story told, and I wanted to share the source of my inspiration with you, in part, of the creation story.

The birth of the Amanara/Calageata appeared as an ethereal, seven-petaled lotus shining the first light in the primordial universe after the 'Big Bang'. It's petals opened, and the building blocks of life, it's sparks of energy, spread out into the cold.

(Symbolic ~ The Cosmic/Orphic Egg) 

The lotus flower with its seven petals is often symbolic of 'the source'.

Picture below:

In Shahin Ghiray’s Turkish ghazal or circle ode, the center word acts as both the first and last word of each line. A repeating cycle.

Inspiration for 'The Deisi'

In Hinduism and Buddhism, a sacred syllable, word, or verse, that is believed to possess mystical or spiritual power is called a Mantra. Mantras may be spoken aloud or uttered in thought, and may be either repeated or sounded only once. Reminds me of the hymns/chants in various religions.

Mantras are energy /vibration, and these vibrations can do many things. Most mantras have no verbal meaning, but they are significant and are said to help spiritually.

Read more HERE

Carsten Witte

love and light

Trace

xoxo

It all started with the feeling of dread...Book Excerpt 'A Carpet of Purple Flowers'

It all started with the feeling of dread...

Chapter 1

Leave the Past Where It Belongs

Walls and shutters were scrawled with neon graffiti that blinded every time a car sped past. Bea averted her eyes from the glare on hearing a cab driver scream at a drunk for throwing a beer can too close to his car. She watched it roll, rattling across the road, until disappearing into a pile of litter that lay by an over-turned bin. She rested her head against the frame of a bare window above the Victorian bookshop. Here, nothing surprised her, it was to be expected, living in one of the worst parts of South London. Perhaps that’s why she never truly felt like it was home. She wanted nothing more than to go to bed, crawl under the covers and settle down for the night with a mug of sweet tea and a good book, consolation for being stupid, too ready to please, as usual.
All day she’d mentally tormented herself for agreeing to attend Leanne’s party, and now it was too late to cancel. She didn’t want to see Brandon, her ex. The man she had successfully avoided for six months. Damn him! Of course he’ll show up. After all, he’s the birthday girl’s brother. Bea sighed, and the closeness of her warm breath on the cold glass caused an area of the window to mist up. She ran her slender finger over the damp blur of condensation, producing a squeaking sound as she casually drew a large question mark.

Images for inspiration purposes only.

Read more HERE ~ http://www.traceyannemccartney.com/book-excerpt.php

The Weekend "Dark Times" Ft. Ed Sheeran [Official Lyrics]

love and light

Trace

xoxo

Character Tommy

South London ~ His Manor

(James Edward Quaintance aka Jimmy Q)

Book Character ~ Tommy 

HEIGHT 183 - 6' 0" 

CHEST 87 - 34" 

WAIST 78 - 30" 

HIPS 92 - 36" 

SHOE SIZE ~ 43 - 10.5 

HAIR ~ BLACK 

EYES ~ BLUE

Character Board ~ Tommy HERE