In the short story The Case of the Four and Twenty Blackbirds Neil Gaiman describes the character, Sergeant O’Grady doing a number of things including: He puffed on his meerschaum. Did you know that meerschaum is a material used for making pipes? Or did you figure out what the character was doing by the verb ‘puffed?’
When you read a word like that does it make you curious?
Do you put a post-it note on the page and look it up afterward?
Of course if you’re reading with a Kindle app on an iPhone or iPad, you can just highlight the word and it’ll look it up for you.
Writers are like detectives, looking for clues about the universe, clues that show us where our stories may lead. Curiosity is an essential quality in a writer. For one thing, it can help us get past writer’s block. We may think we know a lot about a subject but there is always more to know. So if you’re writing a novel about a zombie ballerina soccer player and you just don’t know what she’s going to do next, trying googling soccer teams in Brazil or some place you’ve never visited. Maybe look up ballet in the frozen north.
Seeing your story from a different angle may light the spark that sets your story-telling on fire again.
When you read a word like that does it make you curious?
Do you put a post-it note on the page and look it up afterward?
Of course if you’re reading with a Kindle app on an iPhone or iPad, you can just highlight the word and it’ll look it up for you.
Writers are like detectives, looking for clues about the universe, clues that show us where our stories may lead. Curiosity is an essential quality in a writer. For one thing, it can help us get past writer’s block. We may think we know a lot about a subject but there is always more to know. So if you’re writing a novel about a zombie ballerina soccer player and you just don’t know what she’s going to do next, trying googling soccer teams in Brazil or some place you’ve never visited. Maybe look up ballet in the frozen north.
Seeing your story from a different angle may light the spark that sets your story-telling on fire again.