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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/25390
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/25390
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Excite is the wrong thing to focus on. The real key to successful storytelling is to engage the reader. There are no car chases or gun fights in Pride and Prejudice. It is a story of a courtship, decorously told. And yet is is probably the single most durable and popular novel ever written.

There is no magic formula. It is all about creating an experience for the reader that rings true and engages their sympathy and interest. It is about taking the dross of everyday life, running it through a juicer, and then rendering down the juice into something rich and piquant and wonderful. It is life focused, sweetened, and purified.

The writing bromides are attempts to capture aspects of this, but none of them is either sufficient or necessary in themselves. Any technique that focuses, sweetens, and purifies life to produce something engaging and true will work for readers. It is a product of sensibility, attention, and refinement. There is no formula for it, in the sense that you cannot achieve it by technique alone. To be able to do it well, you have to change who you are, develop your sensibilities, sharpen your observation, and refine your craft. You have to learn to think and see and express yourself like a writer.

There is nothing exceptional about this. Many crafts cannot be reduced to formulas. They require immersion and they change who you are, how you see the world. They rewire your brain.

The first and most essential component of becoming a writer seems to be to live your life (your whole life) with a particular kind of attention. You cannot refine life down to its essence until you train your eye to tell the gold from the dross. Some people, it seems, develop this habit of attention very early in life. Perhaps they are even born with it. The rest of us have to work on it, and it can be very hard work. But develop your powers of attention, and the words, and the order and selection of words, will come.

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