When you read your story, does it sound off, maybe you can’t quite put your finger on it, but you know you’ve done something wrong? Sometimes–maybe even lots of times–there are simple fixes. These writer’s tips will come at you once a week, giving you plenty of time to go through your story and make the adjustments.
Today’s tip: Write in the positive, not the negative
For example, don’t say
There was no light in the room
Say
The room was dark.
This hint made a big difference in the tone of my writing. My scenes went from sounding depressing and negative to uplifting and positive. If you’re a mom, your familiar with this concept because you use it disciplining your children:
Don’t say: Don’t jump in the bed
Do say: Jump on the rug.
It’s the same idea. Without the negatives, what you communicate to your reader is more proactive than reactive. The reader feels like they’re moving forward with positives. They feel like they’re being held back with negatives. When I’ve finished a rough draft, I do a search for all not or n’t words, to see if I can replace them. That’s how serious I am about changing the tone of my writing.
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Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. She is webmaster for six blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a columnist for Examiner.com and TeachHUB, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, Cisco guest blog,Technology in Education featured blogger, IMS tech expert, and a bi-weekly contributor to Write Anything. In her free time, she is editor of a K-6 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, creator of two technology training books for middle school and six ebooks on technology in education. Currently, she’s editing a thriller that should be out to publishers next summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.
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Very interesting! So by writing in the positive we are sending positive subliminal messages to our readers? I’m all for that! I’ll watch out for this in the work of other authors. Thanks!
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Exactly–we can use any reinforcement there is to sell our books!
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