Ten Thoughts About Writing
By Bridget Ng
First drafts are allowed to be ugly. Clay doesn’t apologise for being a lump. All sculptures start from scrap. Like Michelangelo, chip away at the stone until you find what has been there all along.
For every good word you write, there will be a thousand more that sound awful, flow awkwardly, or add nothing to the story you are trying to tell. Let them stand in their terrible glory! It is only when learning from bad writing that we come to understand what makes a piece good.
Keep a record of the darlings you have killed. Perhaps one day they will be resurrected, like Frankenstein’s monster given new life.
Punctuation is not just an obligation; it is a form of melody that can make words sing, breathe or leap to new lines. Contrast the softness of a semicolon with the pointed excitement of an em dash — each a different evocation, leading to something new.
The strategy of “show, don’t tell” encourages writers to use sensory description, action and dialogue in order to immerse the reader in the full experience of a narrative. This is a technique capable of building worlds of skyscraper heights and shipwrecked depths. However, at times, it can fail to account for the importance of balance. Showing and telling are two sides of the same coin — an exercise in light and shadow, or essence and appearance. Showing too much can drown the reader in quicksand prose.
That said, the key is often in the details. Every character has a backstory. Consider a tightrope walker who has run away from the circus, or an old businessman with a scarlet-banded bowler hat. The tightrope walker will likely wander the world with their feet flexed and head held high. The businessman might sit like a king on a throne or check his watch with impatient compulsion.
Writing is the art of noticing, of phrasing something in a way that causes the reader to look at it with fresh eyes. If you are writing about a hurricane, try not to resort to the cliché of a “dark and stormy night”. Instead, consider how lightning might look like a scar across the belly of the sky, or how raindrops could be the exact shade of a steel-capped boot.
The fact that prose is defined as distinct from poetry does not mean it has no rhythm of its own. The best phrases carry soundscapes of melody, breathing images to life through deliberate flow and tempo.
Never underestimate the power of a short sentence in pacing, emotion and impact. A lot can be said in a few words.
“Write what you know”: a piece of advice given to many emerging writers. A common trap with this idea is the constraint it implies. Our thoughts are limited by the parameters of our worlds, and too often, it is easy to remain within them, like a frog in the perfect circle of a well. But we must remember that the horizon remains forever out of reach, bleeding into the distance in a haze of colour you can never quite describe. If you don’t know something, learn about it. Experience it. Take life as the precursor for writing rather than the other way around, and keep chasing that horizon into the eternal dawn.
