John Green has offered a piece of writing advice that I think is both interesting and terrifying to follow.
John Green is a young adult fiction author and video blogger. He has always been willing to answer all sorts of questions from his fans. I have visited his website, where I found some of his advice for young writers in his FAQ section. The advice seems to apply to all writers:
"...My other recommendation is to tell stories to your friends and pay attention to when they get bored. I still do this a lot, and it helps me understand how to pace a story, and what kind of phrases and images audiences find engaging..."
This makes complete sense. Before you spend a lot of time typing, you could save yourself hours, days, weeks, maybe even months of work if you spend a few minutes talking about your ideas with your friends, family and peers. I occasionally use my friends and family as a soundboard, and it has helped a lot. But John isn't just talking about general storyboarding, which is what I've done. He's talking about seeking approval for bits of dialogue, specific actions and specific details. He isn't saying to just get verbal feedback for a summary of a novel chapter. He's saying you should speak in depth about every aspect of the chapter and talk about everything significant that you want to happen in those pages.
John's advice makes a lot of sense, but it's not something I could easily follow. Whenever I tell friends about what I'm writing, I give them a summarized overview of the characters and plot. I don't go into significant detail. I usually only have a moment or two to explain my novel in conversation, so it's hard to go into detail. Besides, I'm not sure if my friends want to know those details or if they'd rather talk about something else. I also don't really want to explain, aloud, what happens in my novel in any significant depth. I'd prefer to have them learn about the novel in the way I intended -- through the words I've written.
But John has a point. A great way to know if "phrases or images" are or aren't engaging is to watch, in real time, how your audience reacts to those phrases or images.
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