PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

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SOUNDS

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It is a noisy world and if art reflects realism, those sounds must be in the novel. Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs. Adjectives modify nouns. Okay, you sorta remember the definitions but sounds will help drive the usage of these particular parts of speech home.

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PRACTICE

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Make a list of nouns: bird cold yoyo engine

now make a list of five sounds or other word forms these nouns make.

caw chirp tweet peep trill

add different word forms chirped chirping chirpier chirps

Cold: chilly, icy, iced, glazed, snow, coldest colder coldly coldness, freeze, frozen, shiver.

Yoyo: yoyoer yoyoing yoyos yoyoed yoyoist 

I will leave engine for you to do.

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Now you are not limited to only finding the sound for just one word. Colder than the glass gets when ice crackles in water. The crunching snow made as the shovel plowed through five inches was familiar and made me feel like February was the coldest month of the year.  Yoyos, all sixteen of them, split the air like little jets breaking tiny sound barriers with their whined thrust and whirred recall. (U can hear it!)

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You find a sound or a comparable sound to describe your noun. 

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Example

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The car fell.

The car crashed and fell over a cliff.

From the crunched metal of colliding with the tanker, we heard the doors screech as they bent in upon us and scraped against trees. We felt our bones snap as we tumbled over the cliff to the explosive roaring of oil on fire and screaming.

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Cars falling have sound as properties and in situational relationships. Drama happens when sound is introduced to body positions and dialog. You can hear the action and you describe it with various word forms. ed/ing/est/ly. Okay? It is not pi equals mc squared, but mass is each character, time/distance equal drama. Without those elements the novel becomes stagnant and stuck.

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The novel moves if the mind excelerates, a non-slothful ability to make many fast choices equals a fast paced exciting novel that holds the reader's interest. Ever read a book and finish it and start over at page one because you must read it again. It had action, it had vocabulary, it had a way of saying what made you think inside the novelist's head in images you had not encountered that way before.

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Originality is not a lot of repetition, but new notions, new concepts, new ways of seeing presented in a logical and organized fashion while being enlightening, fast paced in forward motion, and like no other novel you ever read before (the big one). Hard, you betcha! You can do it if you are willing to do the work.

Color functions in the same way. You can see it clearly or vaguely based on the demand of the passage being described. Write it, rewrite it, then rewrite it again to get the start of a good sentence. Then paint the scene, the character, the action, the sound with your imagination. (That is what differentiates your style from other styles). When you can see it, hear it, feel it, you are ready for the next sentence. It is not all about the great plot or the wonderful names of characters - that enhances, there are technical skills to master as well.

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Author's Note: I did my rewriting after the chapter was done - I had a wider range of setings and characters and places to foreshadow or move toward. Stick to your outline, but if it is not working, or you have a better course to take, stop, change it and continue (correcting any references to previous  items means making sure you do not change the original - that's a problem. Sometimes the orginal has to be deleted. Be aware of allusions and references and be acurate. i.e., a charater has asthma. Later they are mentioned as not having any problems with breathing - go back, correct the original or fix the current reference. Like that.) I go back to passages all the time to be accurate with later references - it takes time and good memory - but consistency is madatory.  Novel writing is hard work. Writing is work.

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Consistency is paramount and requires management. I spend lots of time correcting references, especially if one character is substituted for another (confusing casts of 50 or more characters is easy, believe me. - Note: imagine one chararcher with a name, a code, a nick-name, a title, a ship, a series of master skill levels, weapons each with a name - like my Khansmen. Talk about using my lexicon all the time - I have a series of large dictionaries to track all my characters --for easier reference--and to keep it all straight.)  If the destination changes, than plans to get there previously mentioned, have to conform to the new place. If a charater has no legs they can't walk later, like that.

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I do novel notes: To keep it all straight. (i.e., Jenna Fi is a P'Taian who likes Azarian born males and has been reprimaded for attempting to seduce Silver born. - A good thing to know about a character - she also is a Class-I Commander and was hero of the Battle of Minakail where she saved the lives of twenty six T'Can born and thirty six Azarians. She is not a member of a Gold High House, but she is a friend to Regis Madga En P'Taienyat from the war colleges. (such notes keep me clear on the who/how/what/where/whens. Characteristics all  have to be different - the distinguishing things that are unique. Jenna Fi is a psiantic faculty adept and has an ideitic memory. YOU JUST HAVE TO MAKE IT UP AND MAKE IT GREAT! When I need a character to enter and be a part of the action and I chose Jenna (I call up my Novel character file and search for Jenna, copy her descirption to the text I'm working on and have what she is and has done right there for referencing.  I don't know how other authors do it but over 13 novels with 5 nailed down pretty well. Novel Notes help a lot!

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Example: Joli is losing her original design. She is meek and would not challenge anyone. Her growth has to be gradual as she gains experience during the crisis. Go from meek to heroine very slowly and get inside her head to start with confusion and move her to seeing clearly as the action demands. Her motive must evolve to crisis where she is forced via a newly found determination to act and not shy away.

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Now I have a better description of the character nailed down and how she is ready to be positioned inside the action. Bumbling and a burden at first, sure footed and action oriented at the crisis point before the end--shows character development. Growth or devolving - everyone has a history and a future. They get better, stay stagnant, or get worse. Which do you think is more interesting in a character in a book you are reading? Hint: not the stagnant one.

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If you can hear it, see it clearly as you read, taste the described food (compare it to generally accepted flavors), sense the mood, whether calm or anguished, of your characters, then you have incorporated sound (color, motion, and description) well in your novel. I you can not sense the passages, then editing is required until it sparks the ears, the skin, the eyes. You have to see it and hear it and feel it simultaneously. 

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Example: How to edit a flat passage with sound:

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Moe shut the hood of the car and got in, started the car, then changed his mind and went back in the house.

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Moe slambed the hood down so hard he cut his left baby finger. He fumbled open the car door, paying no attention to the dents in the side of the red Ford he bought yesterday. His hand hurt, but he managed to get the key fob out and the thick metal-gray key into the ignition. About to start it and go over to John's house to tell him he was going to sue, he changed his mind. The pain in his hand made him look down and blood was flowing heavily onto the steering wheel. That needed tending, he thought and shut off the engine. The quite lulled his mind into calm. Maybe tomorrow would be a better day to talk to his best friend about  how his new car got torn up.

The same rule applies to things described, thoughts, words overheard, colors, moods, tone, motives, rationales, placement of body parts, and conversations (and every phrase, word, line, paragraph, chapter of a novel). I know. It ain't easy. You still want to write a novel? Sure you do!

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Lady A

10-19-16

1031p

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Revised 01-28-18 ~ allets ~

Revised 06-13-19 - slc 

Revised 12-20-20 ...a