A how-to-write essay series by Ava Clary

2) Design Advice Adapted for Writers

I love to take advice from one medium and apply it to writing. How exactly does this work? Well, you watch a YouTube video on a film director, or you discover a post about design, but you take all the tidbits and reconsider them from a writer’s point of view. It’s a good challenge, and it helps you understand writing a little better.

Advice adapted from Adobe’s How to Design for Your Next Event, posted on 11-20-17

Here are the design tips I want to focus on.

• “Establish your Event Identity”
• Design a “strong memorable background image”
• Think up a “catchy headline or title”
• Use “one or two distinctive typefaces for headlines and body copy”
• Find a “color scheme of three or four colors”

According to the blog, design is about making your product (your flyer, invitation, website, advertisement, etc) “simple, eye-catching and flexible”. There are designing rules, and mostly you use a “formula”. Or, you can “dare to mix it up a little bit.”

I also liked how the blog post was tagged under ‘creativity’, which in my brain immediately translates to creative writing.

How can you make your writing more creative using these design tips?

Well, a design formula sounds like an outline. Stories always have a beginning, where you introduce your main character, then comes an inciting incident and that sends your story hurdling along its path like a car accelerating onto the interstate.  The middle takes the longest, you might meander a bit and pick up a few hitchhikers, or take a potty break. Everything comes together for a climax as you reach the end. Not all books follow this formula exactly. You adapt it to fit your story, but if the basic structure isn’t there – your story suffers.

Let’s tweak these design tips, and find some good writing advice.

So instead of focusing on an ‘event identity’, let’s change that to a character’s identity. How do you establish your character’s identity? You design a strong, and memorable background for them. Or rather – make your character memorable. Give them flaws, give them fears, and make them want something. You describe them just enough to give your reader a picture, but not overwhelm them with every single detail. You give characters a complex and varied personality. Do not use a cookie-cutter. A boring character won’t drive a story, or keep anyone interested in reading.

Easy enough, what about the next one? Making a catchy tag-line.

Instead, let’s apply this to dialogue or descriptions. Catchy implies that it’s quick and yet effective. It catches your attention. It creates a question, and suddenly you want to know more. I love this quote from Neil Gaiman, who tells you to ‘leave behind spaces and empty places’. Your readers will fill up those empty places with their vivid imagination. You must get them started.

Let’s consider the rest of the advice: “Use one or two distinctive typefaces” or “a color scheme of three or four colors”. How is this related to writing?

Typeface and color scheme are very much design elements. If you filled your poster with hundreds of different styles of typeface (script font or blocky font or serif font or san-serif) then it would be impossible to read. It becomes an ugly mess, compared to using only two contrasting fonts. Likewise, if you focus on three or four colors, then you create a distinctive style for your poster. Then it won’t look like a two-year-old with a package of new markers and a blank white wall.  By limiting yourself, you make your design easier to read, and get your message across.

In writing your goal is to engage your reader.

You don’t overwhelm them with details about the world. You drop in hints. World-building is important as an author, but you cannot expect your reader to want to know about the history, geography, animals and where food comes from. They might get bored and stop reading.

Instead of typeface and colors, a writer uses story elements to create their characters. Focus on your word-choice, use vivid sensory details to draw your readers into your story. Your character’s voice gives them a distinctive personality. They need that in order for us to love them or hate them or want to know what happens next.

Whether you’re looking for design tips, or writing tips, you can find advice anywhere. I’ve found writing advice from researching perfumery, or from looking at hair styles on Modern Salon.

Another example comes from this YouTube video essay on Buster Keaton.

Who knew gag comedy could help my writing.

“Keaton was a visual storyteller, and he never liked it when other directors told their story through the title cards… He avoided title cards by focusing on pantomime and gesture.”

Sounds like a brilliant way of saying ‘show, don’t tell’. Don’t tell us that Susy is angry, show us through her words and what she does. Maybe she doesn’t say anything. She could refuse to speak at all, while her companion becomes more agitated and upset. “Come on, say something, Suzy. Say something. Won’t you? I’m sorry about the dry cleaning. I’ll pick it up tomorrow, I promise.”

I’m going to have to study more about Buster Keaton and gag comedy. I want more of that in my writing.

Have you found writing advice somewhere unexpected? Share it with me below.