Write Like I Read… (Revisited)

See. I have a problem with staying engaged. Most books that I read, I skip through hundreds of pages.  HUNDREDS. They just linger. I hate to not move forward and if my characters are still, then their voice has to be active.

You will NEVER see a 90,000+ word book from me. I can’t draw out a story that long. I can’t spend half a page, describing the cracks in the ground and the pink lines in the sky and so forth. I can’t write dialog or actions that have nothing to do with furthering the plot. Recently, I read a book that started out nice but then by page three the author started on this three page description of why the main character liked cats. In my books, you’ll get to learn my characters by how they react in the moment–they decisions they make during their present situation–by their actions and reactions. As a reader and as a writer, I constantly ask myself, what next. And what next. And WHAT NEXT.

Also… I can’t read stories that follow this very traditional “script of life.” The script is not MY reality or a whole lot of city women who have gone ignored by the publishing industry for so long. When you’re 35 and you find that one relationship that makes you loosen your grip on your professional goals and all the stuff you’ve been working for since graduating from high school… PLUS… you’re older and sexually uninhibited, let me tell you…it is steamy.

Also…

I train myself in a certain writing style. I call it Sensual Writing. It’s a way of bringing the reader into the very moment–connecting with the that sixth or seventh sense that I can’t quite define in one word, only that it’s experiencing the titillation of all five senses within oneself as opposed to without–touch the soul, smell the longing, taste the moment, hear more than the obvious, see the angst, desire, happiness or/and etc., and etc…  Okay.

Anyway… (LONG SENTENCE FOLLOWING) Now that I started this new series and it’s a seriously, city girl “contemporary” brand of romance that’s sending some women into a tailspin because the writing style draws them into the story and hooks them on a sensuous level but they’re hating it every step of the way because it goes against everything they’ve been taught about relationships and love and they wish they could stop reading it but they can’t, and they don’t want to buy into it because (not saying), well, I think this post needs to be republished. I’m not going to stop writing the kinds of stories that I write. I’m unable to. And I’ll never write a by the script story either because I wouldn’t know how to. All my characters know is that they are human. They are capable of love–and it happens unexpectedly, while they were seeking other things in life. And now, that it’s arrived, they MUST pay attention.

🙂

Peace.

Z