It is hard to be a writer with a day job. My day job is SEO SEM and a bunch of other technical names. I work through several sites, but home is www.fetch50k.com . I talk to several writers who have a difficult time balancing work, family, and their day jobs. I meet a lot of interesting people who play a part in my short stories.

The SEO SEM industry that I work in is highly competitive. Falkner said, “never worry about excelling others, just focus on excelling yourself.” (Or something like this). I have to remember this in my day job because ‘perception is everything.’

I find that this applies to my writing. The story is not found in the words that appear on the paper. The story is found withing the reader’s perception, the emotions incited by the words.  Learning to develop a ‘word-emotion’ relationship at work has enabled me to create word-emotion relationships in my story.

There are several writer’s tricks that increase a story’s impact. Making the sentences shorter will increase the feeling of suspense. Moving the story’s focus (camera) away from the character, into the scene, creates a breather. But there are words that create an emotion.

I remember once, in the middle of a lecture where none of the participants understood, I swore. The room went quiet. I asked them all to write down how hearing me swear made them feel.  Mind you, I think it is a cop-out for writers to use swearing or violence in a book to create emotion.

One of my most startling horror stories has no monster, weapon, blood, or antagonist. The story is less than 3000 words, but when I ask people to read it - they all respond that I left them feeling ‘unnerved.’  It is all in the power of the words - not the scene - not the props - not the characters.

 If there is a secret to success for authors, it is found in the realm of the wordsmith.

« Handicap


This entry was posted on Saturday, June 7th, 2008 at 7:18 am and is filed under Writing Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.