LifeLines November 2005 - Write it with Fireworks
Put a Banger up its Behind. Light it with sparkle, give it crackle, snap and bang! The effort of getting a story onto the page, finding the right voice, untangling past tense, present and passive – it all seems so difficult and then your tutor asks you to consider elaborate prose! At that point perhaps you think forget it. But actually, writing prose that’s alight and burning with a flame of its own could solve all your problems like a bucket of water over squabbling cats.
John carried the suitcase out to the car, feeling he shouldn’t have agreed to his daughter’s leaving. He had tried to warn Lisa of the dangers of marrying an aspiring rock star and his repeated efforts to engineer romances with better sorts of fellows made her all the more stubborn. Now he was ashamed of the clothes she wore and of those inside the case.
Make your sentences deeply instinctual and defiant!
John wanted to throw his daughter’s suitcase down the steps to the car. Let it thump on every stair, hammering into Lisa some kind of sense: that marrying a wannabe rock star was disastrous and final as far as he was concerned. Cruel satisfaction clipped his thoughts as he pictured the case falling open and dispersing her numerous ragged jeans and beaded jackets into the path of oncoming traffic. Better still if it were smashed to smithereens by one of his young colleagues. That would serve her right for rejecting every one of their romantic submissions. . .
It doesn’t reveal John’s own part in matchmaking but you get the gist and you have to admit, there’s more meat in the second description, yet it’s not so clumsy. Think fireworks. Does it come from your heart? Think colour, drama, defiance; and your prose will light up the sky.
© Bernie Ross 2005
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