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Write What’s Burning Inside – but Beware of Its Fuel

June 7, 2021

affect, guest post, Igor Livramento, writing

Today’s post – “Write What’s Burning Inside But Beware Of Its Fuel” – is authored by Igor da Silva Livramento. He’s a fellow academic from UFSC, fellow author, fellow creative-writing advisor, and overall a great fellow. He’s also a composer, music theorist, and producer. Check out his papers on Academia.edu, his music on Bandcamp, and his personal musings on his blog – in Portuguese, Spanish/Castilian, and English. You can also find him on LinkedIn.

Chris mentions this time and again: Write honest to heart, from the fire burning inside. I’d like to add: Indeed, but beware of your flames’ fuel. Not for comedic tone, may I claim.

write burning inside — Write what’s burning inside; but beware of its fuel

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Emotional IQ and Writing: Why It Is Important

May 3, 2021

Writing

affect, characters, emotional iq, fiction, writing

“Emotional IQ” is one of those phrases people in marketing and recruiting love to throw around. Many of them might not even know what they’re talking about. For writers – but also readers – emotional IQ in writing is more than important; it’s crucial.

By “emotional IQ” we generally mean the ability to recognize emotions (our own as well as others’) by noticing patterns and expressions. These can belong to various categories:

Visual. For instance, noticing the way someone’s eyes move, or the way their lips are puckered; body language, in general.
Aural. Think of someone’s speech, including tempo, hesitation, pitch, etc.
Textual. The kind of language we use – including syntax, register, and other such details – can reveal a lot about our emotional inner worlds.

For our context, that is, emotional IQ in writing, you might think the last one is the most important. To some extent you’d be right, but don’t neglect the other two. Visuality and sounds can be major aspects in narrative. If, for example, your goal is to write realistic characters, you’d want their emotional expressions to be subtle, rich, and believable. Visual and aural cues, then, are important.

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How to Less Is More in Fiction

February 15, 2021

Fiction Writing Tips, Writing

affect, exposition, less is more, over-explaining

Notice how the title of this post is an example in itself. I didn’t say “How to Do ‘Less Is More’ in Fiction”, or anything like that. Yet still, you figured it out. The meaning was conveyed.

Of course, this blog post is nonfiction, which makes it about facts. Fiction is about affect, which makes “less is more” even more crucial.

Why?

But because learning how to “less is more” in fiction allows you precisely to strip any excess preoccupation with facts and focus on conveying this affect.

I have partly talked about this before, mostly in my posts on narrative exposition and over-explaining, so feel free to take a look at those two posts as well. You’d also learn a lot reading about the lessons from my poem shuffler program.

In this post, we’ll instead focus more on, well, how to less is more in fiction. In other words, I’ll show you some practical tips on how to make sure you strategically withhold some truths from your readers.

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