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My barista friend told me I was writing my scenes wrong and she was right
I was at a coffee shop in Portland last Tuesday killing time before my shift and my friend Lena, who works there, asked what I was working on. I told her I was stuck on a scene where two characters have an argument over a broken fence. She read a paragraph and said "you're telling me what they feel instead of showing what they do. Nobody cares about the fence, they care about who flinches first." That one sentence made me rewrite the whole chapter and it actually flows now. I started watching real conversations at her shop and noticed people never say "I'm angry" they just slam a mug down or stop making eye contact. Has anyone else had a random person outside writing give you advice that totally flipped your process?
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nancyjones14d agoMost Upvoted
My buddy Kevin got roasted by a bike mechanic once for how he described fixing a chain in his novel. The guy just laughed and said "nobody stops pedaling and then calmly adjusts the derailleur, you'd eat pavement." Kevin rewrote the whole scene based on watching that mechanic work for twenty minutes and said it was the best edit he ever made.
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aaron74014d ago
I had the same thing happen when I wrote a scene about changing a flat tire on a car. I had the guy just pop the spare on in like two minutes. My friend who works at a tire shop read it and asked if my character was a NASCAR pit crew member. I spent an afternoon with him actually changing tires on customer cars. It took me like 15 minutes just to get the lug nuts off with a breaker bar. No joke, I rewrote that whole chapter and added a bunch of small details about the jack slipping and the spare being low on air. That scene ended up being one of the most realistic parts of the book according to readers who actually work on cars. Watching someone do their job for a little while is worth more than reading ten how-to articles.
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