MBM: Constructing Context Clues by Charissa Stastny

This is the last week of March Book Madness. (If you’ve missed any posts, you can catch the schedule and explanation at the bottom.)

Today my friend, Charissa Stastny, is here talking about how language can be both a barrier and a bridge to communication. Char is so sweet, and very supportive and helpful in the writing community. Check out her blog for great ideas. She wrote an awesome post last year for March Book Madness about weeding our words. (See the link below this post).

Charissa Stastny

In real life, words can take on so many meanings. Think of text messages that are used for a large part of communication. When one of my daughters was having a long distance relationship with a boy for a few months, they texted like crazy. They also fought about a lot of those texts.

I wondered why this was, and realized that words don’t convey emotion perfectly as we like to assume they do. They’re easily misunderstood when taken out of context.

Words are the basic building blocks of communication. When they are constructed carefully, they bridge the gap between us and others, welcoming them into our creative worlds. But when tossed around haphazardly, they can become piles of worthless rubble that hinder others from understanding us.

In order to be understood by others, we must also make sure we are not misunderstood.

Context is the key

Context is the other words (bricks) and sentences that are around a certain word, character, or plot in your story.  As authors, we need to be all over Context like bees to pollen. Context gives our readers clues to help get emotion across, which will hook them to our stories. Yea!

It’s important to build our writing carefully, applying enough context clues to paint a vibrant textual picture for our reader. That doesn’t mean everyone will see your writing exactly as you see it, or even have a similar emotional response; we all bring our own world experience, judgments, and preconceived notions to a story. But an author can construct words with the purpose of narrowing the gap between writer and reader through context clues that build a bridge into our world. Here’s a few ways to do that:

OPPOSITION

When I read a book and don’t know what a word means, one of the easiest ways for me to figure out the meaning of it is to look to see if there’s an antonym nearby. In a scene, opposition can work the same way. If a character is having a mental breakdown, you can show the extreme opposite in a side character that is calm and collected. This paints a picture for the reader to see how distraught the other character is by comparison.

DIALOGUE

Hearing characters speak to each other is exciting. It provides great context clues to help readers understand your characters better. But don’t let your characters tell the readers what to think. Construct your dialogue so that clues fall in a manner that gives your readers their own “Ah hah!” moments of discovery into a character’s soul.

NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

A psychology professor from UCLA, Albert Mehrabian, did a study that showed that verbal communication consisted of only 7% of our total communication. The rest—93%–came from nonverbal clues with 55% of that being body language and 38% coming from tonality.

If that’s true, then we, as authors, shouldn’t try to have our characters only speak to each other in dialogue. We need them to communicate in a lot of other ways as well, such as:

1: Inner Thoughts Our brains are always working overtime as we go about our lives. Thoughts can seem random, insightful, or almost crazy in the patterns they seem to take in our conscious brains. Letting the reader see inner thoughts of characters can leave great context clues for them to piece a character together.

A simple sentence like… He kicked the ball.

…Can suddenly expand to create a whole new mood with inner thoughts thrown in.

He kicked the ball. There you go, you no good, double crossing jerk, he thought, as he watched the ball sail over the fence.

2: Physical actions These include body language, closeness (invading someone’s space, drawing back), body contact (shaking hands, throwing a punch), facial expressions, hand and head movements, appearance, posture, speech style (fast, stutter, stress on words), and body sounds. Throw several of these in to help your reader gain context about characters in stressful situations.

Physical clues are very telling…without the author having to tell you.

3: Emotional Responses As an author, you want to reach your reader on an emotional level. If you do, they’ll be hooked. A great book I would highly recommend to help you figure out how to stimulate emotional responses in your readers is The Emotional Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression by Angela Ackerman and Becka Puglisi (http://www.amazon.com/The-Emotion-Thesaurus-Character-Expression/dp/1475004958)

This book lists 75 different root emotions and the various physical, internal, and mental responses each produces. It’s very handy for writers. I suggest getting a hardcopy so you can write down more ideas as they come to you under the right emotion section.

Embed from Getty Images

There are plenty of other tools you can use to drop context clues into your writing, but these will give you a good start in using language as a bridge instead of a barrier to communication.

In the words of Yoda, “Do or do not, there is no try.” (Sorry, I couldn’t resist. I’m a little bit of a nerd). May the Force (of context clues) be with you!

BIO:

Charissa Stastny hails from Las Vegas, Nevada, but has never pulled the handle of a slot machine and can’t shuffle cards to save her life. Since 4^thgrade, she has envisioned herself an author after writing the creative work, The Creature from McGool, and continuing in shame to pen some cheesy romance scenes as a teenager. Thankfully, she has matured somewhat and is a member of the Idaho Writer’s Guild and tries hard not to spread too much cheese around in her writing now. She graduated from Brigham Young University and enjoys writing, reading, hiking and biking. She resides in Idaho’s Treasure Valley with her husband and children (where card shuffling isn’t required).

• Website | Twitter @CharStastny | Facebook | Goodreads | Pinterest

OTHER MARCH BOOK MADNESS POSTS:

• How to Energize Your Writing
• Constructing Context Clues
• Weeding Your Words

BOOKS:

 

 

 

 

Rebecca’s Thoughts:

I love these examples. What a great way to show, rather than tell, the reader what’s happening. I especially love how she gives specific areas to focus on. I’ve read both of her books (intense suspense/romance novels), and she does a fabulous job of this.

As Char has pointed out, language is so much more than the words we speak. When we can get our books to the next level of language, they resonate with the readers.

Thanks so much, Char, for coming back for March Book Madness. Good luck with the release of your new book later this year.

Now it’s your turn? How do you portray what your readers are doing to enhance the communication in your novels? Comment here.

Tune in tomorrow for our next guest: Janice Hardy.

 

If you’re new to March Book Madness, it has nothing to do with basketball (sorry) and everything to do with books. March is National Reading Month, so March Book Madness gives me an excuse to discuss everything about writing, editing, and reading books with some amazing authors.

If you’ve missed any posts, find them here: 

2014 MARCH BOOK MADNESS:

• Our Connection to Book Covers and the Characters Within, by Danyelle Ferguson
• Four Essential Elements of Good Writing, by Gerald N. Lund
• Welcome to Niche-land! by JoLynne Lyon
• Developing Plot and Characters Together, by Tricia Pease
• ”Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson,” by Sarah Belliston
• Using Repetition To Improve Your Book by A.L. Sowards
• Getting the Most Out of Your Critique Group, by Charity Bradford
• The Moral of the Tale, by Christopher Rosche
• Querying: The Method to the Madness, by Chantele Sedgwick
• Creating Context Clues, by Charissa Stastny
• 6 Places to Find Novel Ideas, by Janice Hardy
• Avoiding Didacticism in Our Writing, by Braden Bell