Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day:

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.

J. D. Salinger (1919 - )

U.S. novelist.          

The Catcher in the Rye

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day:

When I was a little boy they called me a liar but now that I am a grown up they call me a writer.

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904 - 1991)

Polish-born U.S. writer.

Remark

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day:

Writing eases my suffering. When you use words, you're able to keep your mind alive. Writing is my way of reaffirming my own existence.

Gao Xingjian (1940 - )

Chinese-born artist and writer, October 1, 2000.

After it was announced that he had won the Nobel Prize in literature.

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day:

A library is thought in cold storage.

Herbert Samuel (1870 - 1963)

British statesman and philosopher.

A Book of Quotations

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day:

Books create eras and nations, just as eras and nations create books.

Jean-Jaques Ampère (1800 - 1864)

French writer and historian.

Mélanges d'histoire littéraire et de littérature, "De l'histoire de la littérature Française"

FEATURE FRIDAYS: WHITE SPACE MAGIC

Creating:White Space Magic

One of the most common mistakes I see when I critique
manuscripts is that the paragraphs are too long.

When I see a dense page of text that has only three or
four paragraphs, I suspect the pace is going to be slow
and the writing is going to be boring.

When I see a page with a lot of white space, I suspect
the pace is going to be fast and the writing is going
to have a lot of conflict.

Part of this is just a psychological illusion.

When a reader is reading a scene with a lot of white
space, her eye zips rapidly down the page. Before she
knows it, she's flipping the page, and then the next,
and the next.

White space makes your reader feel like she's flying.

As I said, this is a psychological trick, and by itself
it doesn't mean very much. Pace is about more than
reading pages rapidly.

Pace is about the amount of conflict coming at the
reader on each page.

Fiction thrives on conflict.

Don't confuse conflict with mere physical action.
Conflict is about trading punches, but most often those
punches are verbal or psychological, not physical.

Conflict is a lawyer cross-examining a lying witness.

Conflict is a woman trying to get her man to tell her
what he's really feeling.

Conflict is a baseball player stepping up to the plate
with the tying run on third and facing the league's
toughest pitcher in the final inning of the World
Series.

Conflict is about back-and-forth.

You get the least conflict per page when you use a lot
of description, narrative summary, and exposition. All
of these tend to use long paragraphs that focus on a
single thing.

You get the most conflict per page when you have a lot
of action and dialogue and when you alternate rapidly
between characters. Doing that will naturally give you
a lot of short, punchy paragraphs.

The more paragraphs you have, the more white space on
the page.

This isn't complicated, so I'm not going to belabor it.
White space is magic, not because it CAUSES good
writing but because it's an EFFECT of good writing.

If you've got a scene that your critiquers are telling
you is slow and boring, take a look at how much white
space you've got. You probably need more.

Look for every paragraph longer than five lines. Can
you break it up?