Kasper Hviid
Sage
The craft of writing has a fixed set of metaphors to nail down the fuzzy concepts. Those mental images are colorful and engaging, and ever so subtly, they shift our perspective. I will try pulling some of them apart and share how I personally see them.
Hook
This uses the image of a fishing hook to describe the opening of a story. Really an odd metaphor. It paints an image of desperation, suggesting you need a trick of sort to bait and catch the reader. Yet, whenever someone starts reading a book, they have a pretty good idea of its content. They have watched the cover, read the blurb, and likely have a solid idea of its genre. All you have to do is deliver. Not that the opening of the story doesn’t require some special consideration, but I see it more as a form of seduction or foreplay, or a car getting into gear.
Writing as a Journey
Writing as a Journey is likely the most fundamental and powerful of all writing metaphors. We have writer’s block, where we get stuck, and suddenly we're not getting anywhere. We have discovery writers. We keep a Writer’s journal like some explorer. We talk about moving forward with our story. Our story has a Point of no return, and the hero has an inner journey.
Here are a few quotes from random writers:
Plot
The term is in family with plots of land seen on a map. We even talk about plot points. There’s also the word complot. Thus, despite their obvious advantages, plotting is distanced and cynical, like someone planning their journey on a map, unlike the more intimate journey of discovery writers.
Flowery language
When people think of the term flowery language, what they imagine is pretty much this, from The Timber Pirate (1922):
The term flowery language suggests something flamboyant, ornamented and posh, something a bit girly, unlike a more manly writing style where the author eliminates needless words, bursting out sharp, clear sentences.
So while a nasty fight scene easily could apply flowery language, the term suggests topics of sunsets, pretty dresses, grand gardens and suchlike. It’s pretty much stuck in a rebellion against literary traditions from the 1920’s.
Dynamic Characters VS Static Characters
In the novel Gerald’s Game,
. Yet, she is what is called a Dynamic Character. In this understanding of the word, dynamic refers solely to the person's mental development throughout the story, which ironically tends to make them less dynamic in the physical sense.
With a term called Dynamic Character, it’s no surprise that this is widely regarded as the right way of making a character. Yet, the history of literature is rich with stories that naughtily insist on being about something other than the mental change of the protagonist.
Character arc
This one sounds kind of epic and romantic, but don’t be fooled. To visualize the hero’s development over time, it uses the mental image of a coordinate system, with X representing time and Y representing the mental development. Curiously, this 2-dimensional way of seeing the character is said to make them more 3-dimensional.
3-Dimensional character
To illustrate the mental depth of the character, this one uses the plastic form of a statue, as opposed to the flatness of a cardboard figure. The dark side of this metaphor is that it suggests that more realism is always better in fiction; you never hear anyone suggest that a character should be less 3-Dimensional. Yet, a lot of memorable characters have a cardboardish quality, where you can summarize them pretty much in a single sentence. The average joe, the broken veteran, the trickster.
Flat Characters
There’s a lot of confusion about this term. It can either mean the opposite of a 3D character, or it can mean a character with a “flat character arc” (awful term, a “flat arc”) or sometimes it means both, since a lot of people think a character without one of them inner journeys in them must be inferior.
Character Flaw
This one also seeks to understand mental qualities as tactile, physical ones. A flaw is something that isn’t a natural part of the object. If a vase has a flaw, then this isn’t part of what the vase was supposed to be like. If a character is described as flawed, it means that he is more or less broken. The term always rubs me the wrong way. I feel that there is something artificial about it, whereas I mostly see my characters in a more holistic light, where the characters’ less flattering qualities are a natural part of them.
Point of View
This uses the most dominant sense, that of sight, to explain whose perspective we see things from. Of course, the POV character can just as well be blind. This is such a fundamental metaphor that it is hard to imagine any other way of seeing things.
Voice
This simply means "writing style". However, the term voice suggests something highly personal. After all, it is your lungs, throat, tongue and lips that create your voice. Speaking with another person's voice is not physically possible.
Your writing style is personal. Yet, writers build their writing style upon that of others, and productive authors have been known to hire ghostwriters. All artists steal, imitation is the best flattery and all that.
Hook
This uses the image of a fishing hook to describe the opening of a story. Really an odd metaphor. It paints an image of desperation, suggesting you need a trick of sort to bait and catch the reader. Yet, whenever someone starts reading a book, they have a pretty good idea of its content. They have watched the cover, read the blurb, and likely have a solid idea of its genre. All you have to do is deliver. Not that the opening of the story doesn’t require some special consideration, but I see it more as a form of seduction or foreplay, or a car getting into gear.
Writing as a Journey
Writing as a Journey is likely the most fundamental and powerful of all writing metaphors. We have writer’s block, where we get stuck, and suddenly we're not getting anywhere. We have discovery writers. We keep a Writer’s journal like some explorer. We talk about moving forward with our story. Our story has a Point of no return, and the hero has an inner journey.
Here are a few quotes from random writers:
"Just make sure you’re continually moving forward on your own schedule, be that fast or slow."
"If I hit a hard rock where I don't know where to go, and it impedes my ability to continue, I'll backtrack and rewrite."
"Structure applies to both the outer journey of achievement, and the inner journey of transformation. In other words, as the hero moves on the visible path toward that finish line"
"Sometimes, I know the writing isn't any good. Sometimes I feel I'm writing uphill. And it's not right, it's not right. But I keep going, 'cause I know I'm gonna go back and fix it. I can always go back. But you have to just keep going forward." — R. L. Stine
"If I hit a hard rock where I don't know where to go, and it impedes my ability to continue, I'll backtrack and rewrite."
"Structure applies to both the outer journey of achievement, and the inner journey of transformation. In other words, as the hero moves on the visible path toward that finish line"
"Sometimes, I know the writing isn't any good. Sometimes I feel I'm writing uphill. And it's not right, it's not right. But I keep going, 'cause I know I'm gonna go back and fix it. I can always go back. But you have to just keep going forward." — R. L. Stine
Plot
The term is in family with plots of land seen on a map. We even talk about plot points. There’s also the word complot. Thus, despite their obvious advantages, plotting is distanced and cynical, like someone planning their journey on a map, unlike the more intimate journey of discovery writers.
Flowery language
When people think of the term flowery language, what they imagine is pretty much this, from The Timber Pirate (1922):
Night’s sable curtain was soon to fall on the short-lived drama of a Winter day in the Laurentians. The departing sub-arctic sun, in its last pale glory, sent up from the omnipresent whiteness myriads of glistening beams that stabbed the eyes like leaping darts of fire. Of sounds there was oppressive absence. Not even a vagrant breeze sighed in the tree-tops; but at irregular intervals the intense stillness was smitten by the lugubrious “Spon-n-n-n-g!” of some aged tree splitting open to the heart where freezing moisture expanded in its crevices. All life and warmth seemed utterly exterminated in the pre-twilight calm save for the distant Monarch of Day slowly receding from his stark white world of desolation.
The term flowery language suggests something flamboyant, ornamented and posh, something a bit girly, unlike a more manly writing style where the author eliminates needless words, bursting out sharp, clear sentences.
So while a nasty fight scene easily could apply flowery language, the term suggests topics of sunsets, pretty dresses, grand gardens and suchlike. It’s pretty much stuck in a rebellion against literary traditions from the 1920’s.
Dynamic Characters VS Static Characters
In the novel Gerald’s Game,
the protagonist spends the entire story tied up in a bed
With a term called Dynamic Character, it’s no surprise that this is widely regarded as the right way of making a character. Yet, the history of literature is rich with stories that naughtily insist on being about something other than the mental change of the protagonist.
Character arc
This one sounds kind of epic and romantic, but don’t be fooled. To visualize the hero’s development over time, it uses the mental image of a coordinate system, with X representing time and Y representing the mental development. Curiously, this 2-dimensional way of seeing the character is said to make them more 3-dimensional.
3-Dimensional character
To illustrate the mental depth of the character, this one uses the plastic form of a statue, as opposed to the flatness of a cardboard figure. The dark side of this metaphor is that it suggests that more realism is always better in fiction; you never hear anyone suggest that a character should be less 3-Dimensional. Yet, a lot of memorable characters have a cardboardish quality, where you can summarize them pretty much in a single sentence. The average joe, the broken veteran, the trickster.
Flat Characters
There’s a lot of confusion about this term. It can either mean the opposite of a 3D character, or it can mean a character with a “flat character arc” (awful term, a “flat arc”) or sometimes it means both, since a lot of people think a character without one of them inner journeys in them must be inferior.
Character Flaw
This one also seeks to understand mental qualities as tactile, physical ones. A flaw is something that isn’t a natural part of the object. If a vase has a flaw, then this isn’t part of what the vase was supposed to be like. If a character is described as flawed, it means that he is more or less broken. The term always rubs me the wrong way. I feel that there is something artificial about it, whereas I mostly see my characters in a more holistic light, where the characters’ less flattering qualities are a natural part of them.
Point of View
This uses the most dominant sense, that of sight, to explain whose perspective we see things from. Of course, the POV character can just as well be blind. This is such a fundamental metaphor that it is hard to imagine any other way of seeing things.
Voice
This simply means "writing style". However, the term voice suggests something highly personal. After all, it is your lungs, throat, tongue and lips that create your voice. Speaking with another person's voice is not physically possible.
Your writing style is personal. Yet, writers build their writing style upon that of others, and productive authors have been known to hire ghostwriters. All artists steal, imitation is the best flattery and all that.