Advice/Help How might I improve my writing?

[Bone2pick]

I've never read the grapes of wrath but to your first point...

Fair enough, but you can find bundles of other examples that open with setting description in the library of your choice. For instance:

"It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed. Summer gathered in the weather, the wind had the proper touch, the breathing of the world was long and warm and slow. You had only to rise, lean from your window, and know that this indeed was the first real time of freedom and living, this was the first morning of summer."

-Ray Bradbury, opening paragraph of Dandelion Wine

Opening with setting description is only "white noise" for the reader if the setting is largely irrelevant to the character, scene, and/or greater story—but that's true of anything. That's why I can't endorse the advice: one shouldn't open their story with setting description. However, I will agree with a similar in spirit (but significantly different) piece of writing advice, that being: one shouldn't feature irrelevant description in their writing, no matter where they are in the story.

 

[salvia palth]

If you use Chrome or Firefox, get the Grammarly extension. It's free, and it really helps correct a lot of errors. If you want you can pay for even more corrections, but I don't have the money right now to do that, or else I would.

 

[Sepulchritude]

Thanks, but I don't need another spell-checker.

 

[Tedronai]

"It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed. Summer gathered in the weather, the wind had the proper touch, the breathing of the world was long and warm and slow. You had only to rise, lean from your window, and know that this indeed was the first real time of freedom and living, this was the first morning of summer."

I'm no familiar with the story, but I would be willing to bet that could be entirely cut without effecting the story.

It was a quiet morning? Riveting. Nothing in that paragraph poses any questions about the story, as pretty as the prose is it doesn't make me care.

Anyway, I feel we're high jacking Sepulchritude 's thread somewhat.

 

[Sepulchritude]

Somewhat? More than half of this thread has been devoted to bickering about how a proper story is begun.

 

[Tedronai]

I wouldn't say bickering. So far I'd say there's been some good advise about how to improve your writing. Develop character and build a setting that works as an extension of that character.

 

[Sepulchritude]

Frankly, I think both sides have equally applicable advice, depending on what kind of story I want to tell.

 

[Tedronai]

Both do, they're not mutually exclusive and as you've already figured out they're contextual.

 

[Sepulchritude]

Man, that has to be the most unfortunately obnoxious emoji I've ever seen. All of the RPnation emoticons are annoying, frankly. They're like happy little yellow balls of passive-aggression incarnate, poisoning the words of whomsoever employs them.
Not saying your statement was actually passive-aggressive though, but, you know.

 

[Bone2pick]

I'm no familiar with the story, but I would be willing to bet that could be entirely cut without effecting the story.

It was a quiet morning? Riveting. Nothing in that paragraph poses any questions about the story, as pretty as the prose is it doesn't make me care.

The book is amazing. The author is a legend. And I appreciate how he opened the story. Sorry you don't get it.

 

[Tedronai]

I'll live, but if you want to discuss it any further could you start a new thread before we derail this one any further.

 

[Beckoncall]

If nobody said this already, I submit you marry your writing to the tenet of "three whys"... if you ever find yourself asking yourself why something is or why a character does/did/will do something... take some time answer the question. Then (even if only to yourself) have a why for that which may be shared in the larger context of the writing... then answer a THIRD why for the previous.

For example,

Sir conrack gets very quiet after finally slaying the ogre he was hunting, he only lets Phaedra close enough to sense that behind the grim visage of his helmet, he is quietly weeping.

Why?

Because when he was a little kid, a sadistic ogre smashed his older sister with a boulder right in front of him in a trackless valley in the eastern reaches. He had to wait until he was grown to move the boulder and bury her.

Why? Because he and his sister were raised by halflings in the eastern reaches, with all of the above explaining his voluminous appetite, never really fitting in with his own kind, and his burning hatred for trolls, ogres and bandits.

If YOU ask why three times when you write, most readers won't ask why more than twice... even if all the answers aren't explicit, you've fleshed things out to where your world has more dimensions.

 

[Windsock]

"How do I write more gooder?"

Write more. Involve people who write better then you.

Wait several years.