Hello Mello!
Through the Eyes of Mello
Hello reader!
Winter is here!
Well, not exactly.
Weather-wise, the it’s still pretty warm in some areas. Sometimes even hot! (Looking at you, El Paso.) And if you’re the kind of person who likes to get technical, winter still a long way off, a whole 68 days!
But honestly? Here in Datil, it sure doesn’t feel like it.
Here at the farm, we’re preparing for frosts and fighting off the flu! We’re harvesting everything, and whatever we’re not harvesting, we’re moving to the greenhouse. Whenever we’re feeling well enough, those precious minutes are spent covering plants in row-covers, and freezing our produce! (I speak from experience when I say don’t try to handle heavy rocks to hold down row-covers while sick. There’s a 90% chance that your fingers will get squashed.)
It’s been a crazy week, between false-alarm frosts and pesky flu bugs, but God has never failed to provide just enough time to prepare our plants for winter. We’ve still got a long way to go before we can finally take a good long farming break this winter, but we thank God he continues to provide us with false-alarm frosts and not-so-severe sicknesses.
Eagerly awaiting winter,
Mello
Writing tips!
Does your brain break every time you read over your draft? Do you have to read sentences multiple times to get the meaning of it? One very common mistake new and sometimes even experienced writers make while writing is thinking that it must be fancy to impress the readers. And usually, that leads to the main topic of this section: Wordiness.
Now, that doesn’t sound like too much of an issue, does it? The amount of words and fancy adjectives you put in a sentence shouldn’t really make a difference, should it? Well, you’re hearing it now from someone who’s been writing for six years. It is. It makes a very big difference.
For example, let’s take a random paragraph and test this out. Here’s a sentence that could be an impactful moment in a story.
Jax looked down at Robin with cold, unforgiving eyes. He stared at the shorter boy, a trace of a smirk on his face. The air felt cold, and Robin shivered as the reality of the betrayal sunk in.
Now, say you wanted to make the sentence more impactful, so you decided to add fancier words and more description. You work on the piece for another fifteen minutes and end up with this:
Jax's visage exhibited an aura of frigid animosity as he looked down with cold blue eyes upon Robin, a comparatively diminutive figure. His slightly curved lips bore a barely discernible hint of satisfaction as he scrutinized the poor, trembling Robin, who’s hazelnut color hair rustled in the wind, with a resolute stare that seemed to radiate a glacial temperature. Meanwhile,, Robin was overcome with a chilling tremble as the harsh reality of treachery penetrated deeply into his innermost core, leaving him feeling numb and depleted.
Ehh… if you leave that in your story, you’ll end up with your reader trying to make sense of the meaning of the fancy words instead of feeling bad or upset at the characters.
Of course, I’m not saying to avoid all adjectives and fancy words! In fact, the original sentence could use some sprucing up! But compare this to the other example:
Jax looked down at Robin with cold, unforgiving eyes. He stared at the shorter boy, a trace of a satisfied smirk on his face. The air felt frigid on Robin’s skin, like a cruel knife. Robin shivered, his breath catching as the reality of the bitter truth sunk in.
Doesn’t that sound so much better?
Happy writing!
FUN FACT:
Palindromes are words that can be spelled the same fowards and backwards (See: civic, radar, level)! However, the word palindromes aren’t a palindrome, but it does spell another word, emordnilap, when written backwards! An emordnilap is a word that spells another word when written backwards (See: stressed, desserts; gateman, name tag; time, emit.)! So therefore, an emordnilap palindrome is a emordnilap palindrome!
- Mello
10/14/23