Paul Whybrow
Full Member
As if my poor brain doesn’t have enough to cope with learning how to narrate, record and edit audiobooks, I’m relearning how to play the acoustic guitar, a skill I lost after having a minor stroke in 1995.
My attention has been drawn to articles on guitars, and I saw a question on Quora that piqued my interest: ‘What should all guitarists know in general?’
Several musicians answered, including Tom Robinson (not the British singer-songwriter) In his response, he advised:
If I could pass on one piece of information to every aspiring guitarist, it would be this:
Technically skilled guitarists are a dime a dozen in today's world. Nobody gives a shit if you can play that Metallica song note-for-note. If you want anyone to care about you, learn to play with feeling.
This might sound overly aggressive or already clear, but I am amazed by how many people fail to grasp this basic rule of musicianship. Too many people dedicate the whole of their musical study to perfectly recreating someone else's musical feeling.
If you can perfectly play someone else's guitar solo note-for-note, you will remain, at best, equal to a radio.
It struck me that the same advice could be applied to writing. I recently gave up on a 450-page crime novel written by a well-established author (who shall remain nameless), largely because he didn’t evoke any emotions about the murder of a young girl. I doubt that this story would have been published if submitted by a debut author. I’ve read several of his novels which were more nuanced. With this one, he phoned it in.
If a writer doesn’t care what happens to his characters, why should the reader?
We discussed using emotions in an old thread, but there’s some really passionless writing about:
https://colony.litopia.com/threads/can-you-feel-it-emotion-and-your-wip.1862/
Writing with feeling conforms to the oft-given advice to ‘Show, Don’t Tell.’ It only takes a word or two to move the reader by showing how a character is affected by a traumatic event. A reader will bond with the protagonist or antagonist if they know their inner workings. Note, they may not like them, but eccentric heroes and evil villains sell books!
It’s not always an easy thing to do. With my WIP, I’m struggling how to describe my MC’s emotions as he’s an army veteran who hasn’t stopped responding to life like a killing machine, yet he’s falling in love for only the second time in his life. He’s formidable to the outside world, but within him he’s in turmoil.
Do you write with feeling?
My attention has been drawn to articles on guitars, and I saw a question on Quora that piqued my interest: ‘What should all guitarists know in general?’
Several musicians answered, including Tom Robinson (not the British singer-songwriter) In his response, he advised:
If I could pass on one piece of information to every aspiring guitarist, it would be this:
Technically skilled guitarists are a dime a dozen in today's world. Nobody gives a shit if you can play that Metallica song note-for-note. If you want anyone to care about you, learn to play with feeling.
This might sound overly aggressive or already clear, but I am amazed by how many people fail to grasp this basic rule of musicianship. Too many people dedicate the whole of their musical study to perfectly recreating someone else's musical feeling.
If you can perfectly play someone else's guitar solo note-for-note, you will remain, at best, equal to a radio.
It struck me that the same advice could be applied to writing. I recently gave up on a 450-page crime novel written by a well-established author (who shall remain nameless), largely because he didn’t evoke any emotions about the murder of a young girl. I doubt that this story would have been published if submitted by a debut author. I’ve read several of his novels which were more nuanced. With this one, he phoned it in.
If a writer doesn’t care what happens to his characters, why should the reader?
We discussed using emotions in an old thread, but there’s some really passionless writing about:
https://colony.litopia.com/threads/can-you-feel-it-emotion-and-your-wip.1862/
Writing with feeling conforms to the oft-given advice to ‘Show, Don’t Tell.’ It only takes a word or two to move the reader by showing how a character is affected by a traumatic event. A reader will bond with the protagonist or antagonist if they know their inner workings. Note, they may not like them, but eccentric heroes and evil villains sell books!
It’s not always an easy thing to do. With my WIP, I’m struggling how to describe my MC’s emotions as he’s an army veteran who hasn’t stopped responding to life like a killing machine, yet he’s falling in love for only the second time in his life. He’s formidable to the outside world, but within him he’s in turmoil.
Do you write with feeling?
