Here’s what might be wrong with your writing! #amwriting #writer #author #writing #fiction

What's the difference between these two phrases, a whisper of a smile or a faint smile? So for instance, if you're writing some dialogue and you end it with, she said with a whisper of a smile, or she said with a faint smile, if you think they're basically the same thing, you couldn't be more wrong. And this is showing up in your line-by-line writing because whisper of a smile is figurative because a smile can't whisper. You're using a metaphor there to show how the smile is operating, or a faint smile is strict. It's showing. It's concrete. You can have a faint smile. Why does this matter? Why am I making such a big deal about this? Well, it's because when you use figurative language, you force your reader to do extra internal processing to understand what's going on. And what that does is it creates some distance between the reader and what's happening on the page. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but you have to know when to use it and when not to use it. When you need the reader to stay right close to the action and feeling the action coming in, you don't want to use figurative language because it creates space between the reader and what's happening. But then there are times where you want the reader to be considering more about what's happening on the page, and that's when you can use figurative language like a whisper of a smile. If you can't tell the difference between these two things, I guarantee you it's showing up in your writing and it's causing some real problems.