Help readers experience your feelings with you.ĩ inspirational examples of “show, don’t tell” 3. Then think about painting a vivid scene that expresses that feeling. In your draft story, look for abstract feelings like I felt lonely, sad, or happy.
I might have found it funny in England, or irritating, or I might not have noticed it at all, but that autumn it worked under my skin, depositing little grains of anxiety and shame. Each time, without fail, the barista looked mystified and asked me to repeat myself. I ordered the nearest thing to filter on the menu: a medium urn brew, which was written in large chalk letters on the board. Here’s what happens when she tries ordering coffee in her local café: Laing’s loneliness becomes more poignant when she describes how daily interactions reinforce the feeling of separateness. You can be lonely anywhere, but there is a particular flavour to the loneliness that comes from living in a city, surrounded by millions of people. You can see them, but you can’t reach them, and so this commonplace urban phenomenon, available in any city of the world on any night, conveys to even the most social a tremor of loneliness, its uneasy combination of separation and exposure. Inside, strangers swim to and fro, attending to the business of their private hours. The city reveals itself as a set of cells, a hundred thousand windows, some darkened and some flooded with green or white or golden light. Imagine standing by a window at night, on the sixth or seventeenth or forty-third floor of a building. Laing starts her book with this visual description of feeling disconnected while being surrounded by people: Readers can only grasp the intensity of your story when you translate feelings into action and vivid imagery. The writing process can help you discover what you want to say, and to make sense of your story (and your life).ģ visual thinking tips to create focus in your writing 2. However, if your purpose remains fuzzy, try writing a “discovery draft” to reveal it. If you’re clear on your purpose before you start writing, you can tell your story faster. It’s as if the first paragraphs were only a warming up exercise, and when I cross out these paragraphs, I can reshape the article, cut the rambling and focus on one issue.Ī good story has a clear purpose, so readers feel engaged and want to read on. In a first draft, the purpose is buried somewhere halfway. Often, when I write a blog post about myself, the purpose is initially fuzzy. What’s the problem you encountered? How did you learn to deal with that problem? I often sat just like that, adrift in rumpled sheets, trying not to feel, trying simply to take consecutive breaths.Ī blog post is relatively short, so even more than in a book, it’s important to find focus. A pretty morning, light washing the walls, but nonetheless something desolate about her eyes and jaw, her slim wrists crossed over her legs. Or the one in Morning Sun, who sits on her bed, hair twisted into a messy bun, gazing through her window at the city beyond. The girl in Automat, maybe, in a cloche hat and green coat, gazing into a cup of coffee, the window behind her reflecting two rows of lights, swimming into blackness. I looked like a woman in a Hopper painting. How do other people cope? What do experts say about the sources of loneliness and its cures? How does loneliness manifest itself? She recognizes her own loneliness in art:
Instead, she focuses on one period of her life and on one theme: how she found herself being lonely and how she learned to cope with her loneliness. This is not a memoir in which she shares her whole life, from cradle to now. The biggest storytelling lesson from her book is perhaps its focus. I recently read Olivia Laing’s book The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone, an extraordinary account of her loneliness when she moved from the UK to New York. How we can make writing our own stories easier? And how can we make such stories more engaging? 1. Editing can feel like a daunting, even an impossible task. That no doubt plays a role, but I also find that a draft personal story is often disjointed and rambling on endlessly. Is it because I’m introverted or shy? Because I’m still nervous about sharing my vulnerabilities, my human flaws? Some people seem to write about themselves effortlessly.īut I find it much easier to share writing tips than to tell a personal story. Why does editing take so much longer when I’m writing a personal story?
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