Get comfortable, make a cup of coffee or tea, and enjoy!
Understand what you are writing.
You can better understand what you are writing about when you try to look for the deeper meaning of the topic, and when you start thinking outside of the box. Using a visual example:
- The word love to a person who is not looking at the deeper meaning - Love is amazing, when two people fall in love, it is absolutely magical. It is truly amazing when you can have an intimate relationship with someone!
- The word love to a person who is looking at the deeper meaning - Love is involuntary. Love is an intimate relation between two people where each person needs to know who they are, who will support and love each other regardless of positive or negative things happening. True love is when you stumble and fall, only to get up and walk tall.
Now, analysing these two paragraphs, I can tell you this: In the first paragraph it only focuses on the good things in a relationship and talks about the two people as a unit, with no involvement of themselves, whilst in the second paragraph it shows that there are ups and downs in a relationship, it also speaks of the two people as individuals, who have to find themselves before they become a unit. Going back to the first paragraph, it does not say how one falls in love, its describing how love feels to that person, while in the second paragraph, the words, "Love is involuntary." says a lot more about how one falls in love, which opens many opportunities to speak about how this involuntary love feels like.
The Use of Synonyms.
This can bring a lot of power and emotion into a piece. It is important to stray away from simple writing practices when it comes to writing more complex pieces, unless it is the style you are aiming for. A practice that I follow to expand my vocabulary is to look in a dictionary and thesaurus and pick out a few words that I find interesting, words that I know I will use in the future. Examples of that may be things like this:
- Stubborn - Obstinate
- Colour - Hue
- Great Power - Omnipotent
Examples of words that I feel like I will not use as much:
- Brobdingnagian - Enormous
- Discombobulated - Confused
Note, that although you want to increase the level of English you are writing, you need keep in mind that you do not want to overcomplicate the writing to make it almost impossible to read. Synonyms can bring great power to your pieces, do not be afraid of opening a thesaurus and/or a dictionary. Here are two examples of sentences, one with little use of synonyms and one with a substantial amount of synonyms.
- The boy, confused, looked at what he was writing, and did not understand what to write next.
- The boy, flustered, gazed at his papers, puzzled as to what he should write next.
The second sentence gives a lot more detail , even by using less words than the first sentence, the level of English is also increased, which makes the sentences more intriguing.
The Use of Personification.
This is to add attribution of a personal nature or human characteristic to something non-human. For example, if you go and read my piece "In The Eye of the Storm", you will notice that I gave human attributes to both the trees and emotions. I felt that it brought a certain edge and power to the piece which made it more enjoyable to read. I also did not over use synonyms but used a substantial amount to create the atmosphere I was planning on creating.
The Use of Abbreviations.
I have said this time and time again, to multiple people, please do not use abbreviations like, "don't" or "it's", take the time to write the full word out, it does wonders when you read it. Get out of the habit of writing abbreviations, this is a small step but it does a lot to your writing pieces.
Be Aware of everything happening in your scene.
This again ties back to understanding what you are writing. You need to take into consideration all the different aspects that may play a part in the scene you are writing about. There are little to none images used sometimes, so you have to compensate for that by using you words. Set the scene and mood by explaining what you can visually see at fist, then add depth. Here is an example:
- The boy ran through the forest, in search of his little sister.
- The boy paced through the dense, cold forest, in search of his little sister.
Immediately you can picture the second sentence better that the first one, because it gives a more in depth look of the surroundings, and again the use of synonyms can also add affects to the piece regarding what the surroundings look like. When describing a certain aspect of the scene, try not to surpass 2 descriptive words. This might make the sentence long winded and unnecessary. For example:
- The boy paced through the dense, cold forest, in search of his little sister.
- The boy paced through the dense, cold, rainy, eerie, ominous, misty, dim lit forest, in search of his sister.
You want to stray away from over explaining a scene, as it is not needed. Find the right two or three words, and you can set the scene, which you thought was only possible by using several words.
Write from the Heart.
Nothing is more important than writing from the heart, one can clearly see when raw emotion is put into writing. It is extremely powerful and definitely something important to add ! Write from personal experience, there is no better writing than that ! Get out there and go through many experiences, do not be afraid to step out of your comfort zone, because it is outside of the comfort zone where you find the real gems.
This has been Sebastian, and I am signing out !
I would actually just like to thank every0ne for the support that has been shown so far! It really drives me to write and create more and help where I can!