The Power of Words and Subtext
Dear writer,
This past week I’ve been wondering about the ways prose impacts the reader and if there are any ways to improve our own if we’re a little out of practice.
Firstly, let’s define prose. Prose, in relation to creative writing, is considered to be the narration of a story. It’s the way you, as the writer, creatively express the setting, the descriptions, and the character’s thoughts and emotions.
When I was studying Communication, my eyes were opened to the ways we can use language to our advantage. Certain words are often used to provoke an emotion from the intended audience. Words such as premium, exclusive and limited-edition, for example, are specifically chosen to describe a service or product to make them appear to be more luxurious, higher quality and rare, which in turn are also chosen to make the consumer feel special if they were to use the service or obtain the item.
But how does this relate to creative writing?
The concept is the same. Every word your write conveys a specific tone and feeling, so your choice of words will put a specific image in your readers’ minds and make them feel a certain way. What are specific examples of this? Well, if I were to write:
He stood like a statue before her.
What does the word statue convey to you? There are no correct answers, but to me, it conveys he was petrified, maybe shocked or caught. Whereas if I were to write:
He stood like a tree before her.
The word tree would convey to me that he was calm, strong, sure of himself, and maybe even confident to face her.
Now I know those aren’t the greatest sentences ever written, but you get the idea. Word choice matters and plays an important role when it comes to setting the tone of the scene and conveying the character’s emotions. It’s like telling the readers the character’s feelings without telling the readers the character’s feelings. I still find it so incredible the way a simple word choice can make a person feel something completely different.
When it comes to prose, you would ideally always want the character’s feelings to be conveyed through the subtext, and it doesn’t always have to be through the way the character is described, like in the above example. It could be through the way the setting is described. This is because readers love to connect the dots themselves. If an emotion is told to the reader, it takes away the immersive experience of feeling it with the character. There is nothing more boring to a reader than a story that tells them everything rather than letting them see it and feel it for themselves.
For example, if our character was walking through the city streets on their way to their boring job as they lived an unfulfilling life, we could describe it through the way the character moves and observes their surroundings.
That could look something like this:
Anna drifted with the crowd on her way to work. Graying clouds loomed overhead, making her wonder whether it would be too pre-emptive to reach for her umbrella. The weather report said it would rain by 10am, but she could probably expect it sooner than that. After a moment’s thought, she decided against it; her building was only down the street. As Anna approached her office, she spotted Susan up ahead by the door. Susan was her colleague, who, with every breath, would mention her approaching annual weekend away. The entire office knew about it.
See how the above example didn’t mention how Anna felt about anything, but you can understand how she felt through the tone of the prose and through the subtext. Notice the words used to convey this tone, and if you’d like to, see how you can apply this to your writing.
Sometimes it even helps to use the thesaurus to find the right word that will show the right image or give the emotional response you’re looking for.
If you’d like an exercise to help you develop your prose, write a scene about a character feeling a certain emotion without mentioning that emotion, just like in the example above.
Much love,
Elena
