“Humidity,” “Poison,” “Eros”: Amateurs Who Write “She is a beauty” Without Shame—The “Terror of Density” in a Professional’s Single Line
Don't explain, hint at it. One professional line kills ten amateur lines.
“Amateurs Who Write ‘She is a beauty’ Without Shame—The ‘Terror of Density’ in a Professional’s Single Line”
A stream of adjectives is not a novel. How much “shadow” can you hide in a single line?
Someone who said they had read a few novels written by amateurs once told me this.
“The descriptive power is decisively different between professionals and amateurs. Specifically, the amount of information contained in a single line is on a completely different level.”
I agree so much it brings me to my knees.
Amateur writers are, above all, lazy with their words. When they want to depict a female character, they are perfectly content to slap down a sentence that looks like a special note on a resume, such as, “She is a beautiful woman with a great figure, and because she was raised in the countryside, she has an easygoing personality, but she lives alone and has no money.” This is a complete indulgence in the reader's imagination; it is nothing more than “explanation.” That is not a novel or anything of the sort. It is merely the disclosure of setting materials.
On the other hand, professional writers never escape into easy adjectives like “beautiful” or “poor.”
For example, a professional would write it like this:
“As she stretched, her skirt slipped down, revealing a well-shaped navel.”
That is all. But behind this single line is a terrifying amount of information. With “well-shaped navel,” they hint at her toned figure; by having her “clothes slip while stretching,” they imply a lack of concern for others' eyes and a relaxed upbringing; and they instantly burn into the reader's mind a sense of her daily life, such as “ill-fitting, cheap clothes = poor, living alone.”
A professional’s single line possesses the value and high-density “body heat” of ten, no, a hundred lines written by an amateur.
Don't tell, show. This is the most basic of basics written in every creative writing textbook, but amateurs who can actually do this are an endangered species. This is because they are desperate to “tell the situation” and do not know the craftsmanship of “projecting a scene.” Instead of directly teaching the reader “this is delicious,” you make their mouth water just with the smell of meat grilling and the sound of fat popping. That is what professional work is.
Amateurs who think they have written a novel by lining up hollow symbols like “beautiful,” “good figure,” and “no money.” Try lining up that pile of tasteless symbols you’ve vomited out in front of a single, devastatingly refined line from a professional.
How much of a life can you tell in one line? That difference in density is the cruelly absolute chasm that separates the professional from the amateur.
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