How to make your writing more interesting
One of my favourite essays by Harlan Ellison is “How To Make Life Interesting”, which appeared in his column (and book of the same name) An Edge in My Voice. In this essay, Ellison talked about how he slew the beast of boredom one day while having lunch at an L.A. deli.
Bored to tears by the prattle of a trio of vacuous people sitting near him, Ellison decided to mess with their minds. After paying the check, he got up and non-chalantly insinuated that he was a detective hired by the wife of the boyfriend of the female of the trio. Then, Ellison rushed out of the deli and pondered the chaos he’d left in his wake.
Why not apply that kind of mischief and sensibility to your writing?
Shake things up
I’m not suggesting that you play with peoples’ minds in the way the Ellison did. Instead, consider the incongruities in your life and the life of others. Think of some situation that you were in at some time was … well, if not strange just downright unusual or at the very least worth a chuckle.
It’s that kind of colour that can add a bit of additional life to your writing. It draws the reader in deeper, and allows them to see a side of you and what you’re writing that they normally might not expect.
The key, though, is not to just throw a random incident into a piece of writing. Make the incident or story or anecdote relevant to the subject of your piece.
But don’t make things up
Unless you’re writing fiction, that is. Even then …
If, however, you’re banging out non fiction making up incidents or little stories is dishonest. You might not lose assignments if you’re found out, but other writers may question your ethics. Editors might, too.
So what happens if you don’t have any interesting anecdotes or stories to weave into what you’re writing? I find that hard to believe if you don’t (as I’ll discuss in a moment) but in that case why not consider using a story or situation that you’ve heard about? Just don’t attribute the story to yourself. Make sure that you give credit where credit is due. And, as I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, keep it relevant to what you’re writing.
Be yourself
I tend to think of myself of being rather boring. But when people manage to pull my accounts of the various things that I’ve done in my life out of me, they seem rather fascinated. I never really understood why. Maybe I’m more interesting than I thought …
There’s no real need to put on a mask or adopt a pose. Who you are and what you’ve done is usually more than good enough. Here’s an example:
A few years ago, I was working on an essay (which I never finished, sadly) on not judging a book by its cover. One of the stories I included was something that happened to me in the mid-1980s. As a teenager, I listened to a lot of different kinds of music. One Saturday, I was at what was then Toronto’s best alternative record store, The Record Peddler. I picked up a copy of King Crimson’s Discipline and a disc by the punk group DRI. When I was paying for my records, the cashier looked at the discs and looked at me. Then, he did it again. A strange look of disbelief crossed his face. I assured him that both LPs were for me. I don’t think he believed me …
Something like that is seemingly innocuous, but brings something a little different to a piece of writing. We all have it in us. It’s just a matter of putting it into what we write.
Thoughts? Feel free to leave a comment.
Photo credit: dave from morguefile.com
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When people write I think they forget that they’re writing. I always find that whenever I am reading over an article or paper that to have some personal instances which are mention by the author make the piece more interesting. And, I think that the majority of people are wrong when they think, just as I did a number of years ago, their life is uninteresting and not worth writing about – because in actual fact it is.