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Restraint in Writing: Doing Your Characters Justice

March 15, 2021

I’ve often talked about patience and “less is more” in my posts. I’ve also often referred to the importance of subtlety and ambiguity, rather than over-explaining. Restraint in writing is part of this grand concept, and it basically refers to keeping your authorial eagerness in check.

To exercise restraint while writing means to understand narrative journeys. Exercising restraint and subtlety means to resist divine authorial intervention: If a certain outcome, way out, or solution is unlikely to happen in real life, then it’s twice as unlikely to happen in fiction.

Remember that, although life doesn’t need to make sense, fiction does!

And so, in this post I’ll show you why restraint when writing fiction is important. I’ll also show you ways to find and maintain this restraint. The way can be challenging, but the result will be worth it: You will end up with a narrative that is far more mature, engaging, and rewarding for you and your audience alike.

But, as a first thing, we need to zero in on the concept of restraint. So, let’s begin with some definitions and examples.

restraint in writing
For many authors, restraint in writing sounds negative; it connotes limitation, being chained. Well, as you can see in the next photo, further below, being chained can be a good thing!
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Rhythm in Prose: The Rolling Waves of Storytelling

August 31, 2020

Today’s post on the concept of rhythm in prose 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.

So you’ve heard of rhythm. It exists most explicitly in music, especially music with drums and beats and looping patterns. It also exists in poetry, with its rhyming and metrical patterns.

Indeed, rhythm is a remarkable feature of our very life and its processes. Think of sleeping, walking, breathing, or having a heartbeat.

No wonder, then, that rhythm in prose is so important. In this post we’ll see how it manifests and why it matters.

rhythm in prose
Rhythm in prose operates both on the syntactic and the narrative level
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How to Control the Narrative Pace

December 10, 2019

Controlling the narrative pace is an aspect of writing that most authors aspire to learn. However, it’s also a fairly misunderstood concept. To learn how to control the narrative pace you must know three things: how, when, and – most importantly – why.

First of all, a quick definition: The narrative pace (or narrative pacing) of a story refers to the speed at which the author offers the story. Obviously, this isn’t linked to the speed at which the events of the story occur.

Indeed, as we’ll see in this post, the discrepancy between the two is a key component. The difference between these two – speed of narrative versus speed of plot – is integral in figuring out how to control the narrative pace.

How to control the narrative pace
To learn how to control the narrative pace, you must understand three things: how, when, and – most crucially – why
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