Week 12 Lab: Style

For this week, I decided to watch the TED Talk playlist on creative writing and style. Like last story lab, I will be writing what I learned from each video.

Video 1: The power of creative constraints by Brandon Rodriguez

This is something I have noticed in my own writing. The more conditions you have to fulfill, the more you tend to think outside of the box when writing. For example, in D&D there is a fantasy race called tieflings, who have pupil-less eyes. I had to write a scene involving an explanation of their anatomy, so I had to come up with an explanation for their eyes. I decided to use the simple eye structure seen in spiders as an inspiration, which leads to a whole new line of intrigue to explore.

Video 2: What makes a hero? by Matthew Winkler

The Hero's Journey is a strange one for me. Is it really proof of a "monomyth" or just an example of our brains searching for a pattern? The thing about it is it's so vague that anything can fit into it. Not to mention that our brains love patterns so much that we would be inclined to categorize stories into it even if they don't necessarily fit. It works as a good template for building a story for beginners, but one shouldn't feel restrained by it.

Video 3: How to build a fictional world by Kate Messner

I love worldbuilding. It is almost as fun for me as writing about my characters. I think this gives good advice, but I find it is also useful to get a sense of information that won't be relevant to your readers, just to increase your own understanding, but that is just a preference of mine. 

Video 4: What "Orwellian" really means by Noah Tavlin

It is a fair point, saying that words are often used for a desired effect. It is why every scientific article is written in a manner that makes it really hard to read and understand unless you are in that branch of academia. It is an elitist thing that I think stems from rampant imposter syndrome, but I won't get into that right now.

Video 5: What makes something "Kafkaesque"? by Noah Tavlin

I must admit that I am unfamiliar with Kafka and his work, but it seems interesting. I am still not sure if I understand what Kafkaesque means though. 

Video 6: How to write descriptively by Nalo Hopkinson

I understand and agree for the most part with what this video is trying to say, but I cannot help but remember a harlequin romance novel I read once that did this to excess. In a single paragraph, they described the love interest's eye color at least three different ways. The peak of this was when his eyes became "like a fireplace viewed through a glass of whiskey on ice." Amber. That is the color you are looking for. I am all for fun descriptions, but after a paragraph describing this dude's eye color, I would rather you just say "amber" and call it good. 

Video 7: Beware of nominalizations (AKA zombie nouns) by Helen Sword

See, this comes back to the elitism I was talking about earlier. This is done deliberately in academia. The goal is to make the writer sound smarter by making it hard to understand and focus on the content. I will admit I am guilty of this in lab reports.

Video 8: The pleasure of poetic pattern by David Silverstein

I write riddles in my spare time so I definitely have noticed this. I tend to enjoy the ABAB rhyme scheme best, but internal rhymes are really fun. It is all part of how our brains work. The human brain loves loves loves a pattern. 

(Image Information: Sense of Style Flashcard by Sacha Chua on Flickr)

-A.