Write the Unexpected
I had a minor “huh” moment recently. I’d washed a flower vase and had left it to dry on the kitchen counter. I’d then taken two eggs, to prepare an omelette. I set them on the drying mat beside the upturned vase so they wouldn’t roll away while I got a bowl.
The visual of the vase and the eggs momentarily made me pause. It was the juxtaposition, I suppose. One doesn’t always see eggs and vases together, at least I don’t. Regardless, the image caught my attention.
That’s the exact effect we’re looking for when we sculpt our prose. What words or phrases can we combine to create that attention in our readers? How can we use language to get our readers to pause at the unexpected or unusual, just as I did for the eggs and vase? It won’t happen for every word, sentence or paragraph (imagine how stilted the experience would be for readers!) but it’s our aim on at least some of the pages.
And this takes time. We often want to rush through our story because it’s a long process to begin with. But we need to slow down, examine what we’ve written and look for the right spots. Unlike the vase/egg image, which was purely happenstance, we purposely craft those phrases. Our job is to engineer those “huh” moments. It’s a lot of work, but the payoff is, uh, eggcellent. (I couldn’t resist! 🙂 )