A technique for dealing with abstractions in your writing

Here at Infinite Authors we're often asked how you know if an idea is suitable for a poem. Any idea, however faint, that gets you excited, that touches a nerve, or evokes an emotional response can be the spark of inspiration. The trick is to fan that spark with enough strength to create a fire without flapping so much you blow it out. The biggest pitfall is going for the big topics, such as love, death, time, nature and God, without sufficient preparation. All poets tackle some of these subjects at some point - it's why poetry exists, and it would be unusual if you didn't want to at least try to explain through verse the reason you became a high priest in the Society of Waco. But in order to capture the essence of these abstract phrases you need to know how to keep it personal.

When you try to write about love, for instance, you're always in danger of obscurity and repetition. The word love isn't tied to anything specific, it's different for each and every person and nobody can pin down exactly what it feels like. The more abstract and high-flown the phrase, the less precise and evocative it will be. Try to avoid abstract terms altogether in your writing - it's difficult to empathise with a vague impression.

Try this. Make two lists, the first containing locations (a bathroom, a garage, a church) and the second containing abstract terms (love, anger, madness). Randomly pick a word from each list to make an abstract location, say 'the bathroom of madness'. Now write a short poem or prose piece describing the place, without using any abstract words (even the one you picked). The idea is to convey the feel of a place using the evidence of your senses and the truth of your own experience and not have to rely on meaningless, shadowy abstraction.

You can write about an abstraction without referring to it directly with subtle, personal hints rather than a slap in the face. Instead of using a poem to tell your reader about a terrifying experience, show them. In other words, don't use the word terrified (a reader's eyes will brush over it, it means nothing to them in the context of your poem), but try to convey the experience of being terrified - how you felt, what you were thinking. Everybody has been terrified at some point in their life, and if you evoke the way you were affected by the experience you can attract a reader's empathy.

I'm not necessarily talking about metaphors here: to write a poem about an old man visiting a cemetery might involve a headstone as a metaphor for the inevitability of death. This is a fairly obvious symbolic link. Instead, the same old man may be looking through his dead wife's wardrobe for things he can donate to charity and come across a tatty pair of shoes she wore forty years ago. The shoes aren't a direct metaphor, but they embody the sadness he feels at her passing. Through the object you can evoke a powerful, terrifying feeling of loss; the painful flood of returning memories; the distant abstract made flesh and soul. This is how powerful writing is born.

Lose your blinkers

Here's a great creative writing tip that we as publishers have passed on to many of our authors. It's about recording detail and it doesn't matter whether you're writing a novel that you're hoping to get published, or self publishing a business book or an encyclopedia of Bulgarian beetroot jokes.

Most of us claim to be observant, but are we? Can you accurately describe the house across the street without looking? Try it now! How about the woman who works in the local Co-op? The route you follow to visit a loved one? Our brains automatically ignore anything that isn't immediately relevant so we become blind to the all-important details. I was shocked the other day when I couldn't remember the colour of my daughter's rabbit, and she's had it for nearly ten years. I look at the rabbit every day but I don't see it properly because I don't like it.

Don't take the world for granted. Look at things you wouldn't normally look at and see them in a new light. Notice the candle burning through the dirty window across the street, the scuffed and long-forgotten wedding ring embedded in the fat, purple finger of the woman in the shop, the graffiti that says 'love sucks' that you pass on the way to your loved one. There are stories everywhere if only you'll look. Your job as a writer is to look for the detail that brings your own story to light. Learning to see the little things will give your work depth as well as fresh ideas, interesting locations and vibrant characters.

Buy a notebook, a small one that will fit in your pocket or your handbag. When you see a detail that resonates with your work jot it down. Write down snatches of conversation, interesting news reports, random interchanges. Draw pictures of a car that one of your characters might own or clothes in shop windows that would make the perfect outfit for one of your characters. Make notes everywhere you go; be the annoying sod who's so busy scribbling that you bump into the Big Issue bloke. Your notebook will become a scrapbook of apparent trifles that might just be vital. Scraps can bring your work to life.

There's a limit of course. It's good to be a detective but don't overplay your part. The average reader doesn't give a toss how many bricks make up your neighbour's wall, or how many times the lady in the wine shop hiccups before she gets your scotch into a bag, or the type of asphalt on your loved one's drive (unless, of course, your loved one is buried in it). You want just the details that will give colour to your characters and their world.

Get published in style!

If there's one thing publishers complain loudly about (rest assured there isn't just one) it's wannabe authors writing in a style that simply doesn't suit them and expecting to get published. The writing style you choose says an awful lot about you. Don't be shy and don't be false, just act naturally: like your sense of dress, your writing style should be personal and unique to you. 

You can't ignore the fact that literary texts are made up of words, and the choice of which words to use and why - style - is a fundamental issue facing any writer. You can say the same thing in countless different ways, so the way you decide to do it is a vitally important clue to the reader. It's like deciding what to wear when you step outside - you want your clothes to say something about you to whoever you're meeting. You don't wear a revolving bow tie when you visit your bank manager do you? (OK, I do actually, it's worth trying when you've nothing left to lose.) 

Your writing style should reflect your personality. How else can it be authentic? You might embark on a piece of writing using the language of your neighbourhood, or your childhood, a style of speaking that's extremely familiar to you and highly colloquial on the page. You might be aiming for something more sophisticated, mixing a higher register of speech in with your familiar vocal patterns. Or you may be trying a completely different style, one as far removed from everyday speech as possible using language you've picked up from books or research. 

It's up to you what style you want to use, but try to stay true to yourself. If you try to write in a style that you're not comfortable with simply because you want to create a more literary effect you risk sounding false. That doesn't mean you shouldn't play around with new registers - try every style imaginable: humble, simple, rude, posh, learned, scientific, nonsense, arcane - but if you start including words that really don't fit in with your style, or feel you're straining to keep up a certain tone of voice, pause and evaluate what message or mood you're trying to convey.

One good way to find your natural style is to read your work aloud. You don't have to read it to anybody, just walk around reading to yourself. Listen for any discomfort in the language, any words that don't sound right, any cliches you didn't spot when writing. And listen to the shape of it, how well it rolls off the tongue, how well each line works and whether they combine to make a well rounded whole. You may feel a little silly talking to yourself, but it's worth it. If it sounds right it's probably your authentic voice.

Quite a few writers try to elevate the style to impress a lover/professor/parent. But more often than not it comes across as artificial: this isn't the writer speaking honestly, it's literary window dressing. Drop the act, and just be yourself. Believe me. It's tough enough to get published even with an authentic voice!

The trick to succeeding is quite simply to stop trying so hard. Don't try to be different, don't try to be clever. If you're reaching for your thesaurus every five minutes and trying to fit in words like prelapsarian you'll lose your reader very quickly. As Flaubert said, 'Style is life! It is the very lifeblood of thought!'