There are many ways to describe a
garden...or, we could call it finding your Voice...some people may disagree, but
there are absolutely right ways to write and wrong ways to write. Perhaps "right" and "wrong" are misnomers. Words you'd be terribly bored by and would never
want to read, or find extremely tedious- those are the “wrong”
ways to write. Words that pull you in, and make you want to know what's going to happen next, that is the "right" way.
Styles also vary by genre. There seems
to be a formula between genres, of how to write about something,
because HOW you convey the mood is vital to your reader, not just the
subject matter. Understanding these subtleties is important.
I read across all genres. Some people
only prefer one or two genres (boring little trolls!) and that's
fine.
But here is the truth...if you make
something really interesting, and I mean REALLY interesting, you can
break as many rules as you want to, and readers will still love you.
(I'm not claiming to be able to do this, I'm just stating an opinion
I like to call a fact)
Just for fun, I've written several
different paragraphs about a garden and a tomato. Each is a different
mood, or “genre.” Can you spot the terribly boring, bad, DO NOT
DO THIS paragraphs? And it hardly matters what genre they might be lumped into, because they are BAD and WRONG and BORING!!!
I'd like to think it'd be super easy for anyone
to pick out the crap paragraphs, but to my dismay, I've seen stuff written quite similarly in recent works. Amazing writing transcends genre, as
does horrible writing. I may not be in the category otherwise known
as “Amazing” but I sure as heck know boring when I see it.
(Have fun reading these, for they are
meant to be taken with a side helping of salt. Wait. I wasn't
intentionally trying to make a pun about putting salt on a fresh
sliced tomato....oh never mind!)
~The garden was in front of me. There
was a tomato growing in it. The tomato was red. I walked over to it
and picked it. It was heavy for a tomato. There was a small spot near
the stem. The stem was dark green but the spot was brown. The garden
was nice. The tomato will go in a salad later.
~I wasn't sure why the sprawling garden
beckoned to me so, until I spotted the ripe, luscious glint of red
peeping out from behind the vine. Before I could stop myself the
plump fullness of the tomato was pressing itself into in my hand. I
shuddered, overwhelmed with my longing to taste its succulent flesh
and feel the juices dripping down my chin. I bit down, and moaned
with pleasure as the explosion of tangy sweetness erupted on my
tastebuds.
~The greenery of the garden was dark
and forbidding. The metal spikes of the vine trellis leaned toward me
in a vaguely threatening manner, as if to say, do not come closer,
there is nothing good here for you. I jumped as the sudden screech
of the rusty windmill indicated a fierce wind was rising. The sky
loomed over me, full of grays and jagged clouds. A storm was coming
in fast, and the dilapidated barn ahead was the only shelter for
miles. I ran for it as the first raindrops pelted my face, hearing my
mother's warning voice echo in my head as I tugged on the door handle. "Never mistake opportunity for destiny..."
~The tableau was strange to her new
eyes, a haphazard tumble of greens, yellows, and reds. There. The
brightest orangey-red caught her eye and she made her way towards it.
A small spherical shape was growing from a vine as thick as her index
finger. “Classification: Food. Edible fruit called a 'toe-may-toe,
and sometimes a 'toe-mah-toe,'” chimed the electronic identifier in
her ear. “Toe-may-toe. Toe-mah-toe.” She repeated out loud. She
touched its skin, smooth and poreless, and utterly foreign.
~Once upon a time, there once grew an
enchanted tomato. The legend of her beauty and plumpness had spread
far and wide across the land, and many had tried to rescue the
beautiful fruit, but alas, it was not to be. The surrounding garden
protected the fruit with savage ferocity, thick vines that strangled
any man that came too close, and vicious thorns that punctured him
unto death. The tomato longed for freedom and had begun to despair of
her rescue. “I shall wither on my vine and perish,” she thought.
“I shall turn brown and my skin will crack.” As the tomato
continued to muse, she began to understand. “If no one can rescue
me, I MUST find a way to escape. I must rescue myself!”
~The small boy skipped across the lawn
and into the garden where he wandered around for several moments
before spotting a tomato that his mother had asked him to bring
inside because she was preparing lunch for his father who was coming
home early from work to to eat lunch and then he had to drive to the
airport to pick up his sister who was flying home from college on her
summer break. The airport was almost an hour away from their house
and he wanted to go with his father to watch the planes because he
thought maybe he wanted to be a pilot when he grew up but also maybe
a fireman and he didn't really want to spend more time than necessary
with his sister because she always picked on him and it was bad
enough she was going to be home for almost 4 months straight so
adding the extra hour it would take to get home was not such a great
idea after all.
Please write your own version of a
garden tomato descriptor in the Comments section...you know you want
to! And definitely poke fun at the paragraphs I wrote ;)
