Beyond the Predictable

Audra here. Isn’t May just a beautiful month? Spring is finally pushing winter aside letting the sun warm our old house. Now if I can just find the time to sit out on the deck and get a skim of tan on my flashin’ white legs...


Sorry. I digress. It’s just hard to sit inside and write while outside our turkey gobbles at his reflection through the winter grunge of our bedroom window and our faithful coonhound bays at a plastic bag snagged on a remnant stalk of weed poking out of the bright green clump of emerging grasses. Ha! You thought I was going to say something corny like a light breeze ruffling the tree leaves or the scent of newly mown grass, right?

Fooled you. Just like spring brings new life onto the land, so too must we breathe new life into overused, overrated descriptions.

This is not as easy as it sounds which is why we will always read about tires squealing down a road and the moisture laden fog of the morning dawn. I’m not inferring that writers are lazy; I’m just saying re’s a lot of mental gymnastics go into the hewing of a new phrase (no mere turning allowed today).

Unique phrases and description can become an author’s trademark.

It’s one more method to help your work stand out among the legion of competition out there. Think creative, think dynamic.

Think everyday experiences.

Know your setting and characters so well you can bring in description seamlessly to your character’s train of thought. The reader doesn’t even realize they are absorbing the sights and sounds of the setting through your character’s eyes.

Unique dialogue sets a character apart also.

You’ve gotta love Ziva David of NCIS fame. Here’s a character the men can adore and women admire. Besides being just cute, Ziva offers a very logical example of breathing new life into our old clichés as a foreigner speaking English well, but not perfectly.

Ziva: I did not know you were a pool dolphin, Tony.

Tony: Pool shark. And yes, I was.



What did Ziva’s innocent turn of the English language do? It tipped Tony off -balance. It made him stumble to correct her and his execution of whatever great line he’d planned to say falls flat. It woke the audience up.

Same in books.

We all get into a rhythm when we write, a rhythm that becomes comfortable for the author and reader alike. When an unexpected exchange of words puddles on the pavement of literary progress, the reader becomes alert and maybe gives up a snicker or two. They’ve found something fresh and the hunt begins to find more gems hidden in the prose. Caution: do not use this technique unless you have the proper character vehicle to carry it through the book. Nothing worse than building anticipation in a reader and there are no more colored eggs for the reader to hunt and find.

How about characters with unique talents that make them live on in a reader’s mind?

Combine conflicting traits giving the H/H something intriguing to discover. A prim school teacher who lives for karaoke; a rough and tumble cowboy with an affinity for math; a woman with Celiac disease who owns a gourmet bakery. A dichotomy of talents.

I have to confess, I learned this technique from reading tons of Laura Kinsale novels. The woman is a master of creating characters with multiple unique attributes. Oh my goodness, who would’ve ever thought of giving a hero, once a dashing highwayman, severe vertigo that scraps his heroic presence but not his inner ego. Talk about taking a lump of human coal and picking at him through jabs at his pride until his inner strength as no choice but to break through. S.T. Maitland in The Prince of Midnight embodies the most unique combination of traits – horseman, highwayman, artist; arrogant heel and complete sap for a woman’s tears. What a multi-layered, multi-talented hero.

I may not remember the entire plot of that book, but I’ll never forget that hero.

So, what have you done to press your stamp of uniqueness into your writing? Let me tempt you to play. Leave a comment and there’s a box of lovely assorted chocolates and a $10 Barnes and Noble gift card in one lucky commenter’s future. Chocolate is always a good pick-me-up when the words slug along. Gotta send chocolates before it gets too hot to mail!