Up to Snuff #82: Fiction Ideas
By, Afua Serwah Osei-Bonsu
Descriptions
Describing people fully (dressing style, body, mannerisms, facial expressions, smell, personality, personality history, events that molded personality, pedigree, claim to fame, why to love or how to love)
Describing thoughts and narration
Describing places
Describing events
Describing time periods or era’s
Describing actions
Describing dialog
Having a thread that unites all the writing
Having a plot, basis or purpose for the writing
Having an audience
Having built a strong visualization and sensuality
Having developed your characters so that people have a feeling for them
Use of technology or software
Giving gifts and teaching simultaneously that values the book (cultural gifts, details)
Scenes as if it were a “screenplay” which they often become
Working from photos or imagery to create richer descriptions
Staging
Beautiful language, introducing vocabulary
Lessons, often used in High School English classes
Tell a good story
A map
A beginning, middle and end
Research histories and parallels
Suspense, thrill, exultation, surprise, build up, crescendo, unveiling, birth, crux, bridge, moving
Page-turner status, glue them in, have something your audience wants eg. fantasy, romance, gifts, bread crumb trails, teachings, romantic lifestyle, spirituality
All the way through its storytelling and descriptions
Use timelines
Settings, international agenda, historical events, history plus romance, valuation or commemoration of things or places, historical lenses (social, economic, cultural, political etc.), dramatic occurrences, blow-up of dots of mundane or ordinary or small events as something special or existential, human condition, a period or era feeling, a sign of the times
Capturing emotional feelings, tears, euphoria, anger, joy, hope, inciting, fears, gaiety, pinpointing emotions
Dialog design
Carry from one feeling to the next, keep suspended
Make a software for each book