5 guidelines for vivid writing

A dear, dear friend has decided to undertake writing a screenplay. He is a psychiatric doctor by training, and has a deep empathetic understanding of others. I'm sure that whatever he produces will be insightful. In a conversation with him, I remembered that a favorite writing teacher had pulled together a list of writing guidelines which I thought would enable any beginning writer to produce something polished, while preserving that spark of originality which makes even simple writing evocative and lifelike. 

At this point in my life, I have taken innumerable writing classes:  at Grub Street Writers in Boston, at an adult learning center in London, at U-Mass Boston, and "Advanced Fiction" at my Ivy league college.  My favorite classes have been with the aforementioned favorite teacher in Brooklyn. NYC, (with some credit due to the perennial writers' muse Natalie Goldberg).   I thought I would condense her guidelines here to remind myself that good writing can be simple. 

5 guidelines for vivid writing

Be specific and concrete
Show your characters doing, talking, eating, loving. Don't get lost in their heads. 

Use original detail
Search for the unique, sensory details which you see and which others don't see to make your fictional world real and true to life.

Show characters through their gestures.
Do not characterize someone with a summary of their character (she was an attractive, but nervous and anxious blonde), but instead show this through gesture (Passersby watched her fidget with a half-empty pack of cigarettes, hiding behind her flip of hair, and chewing on her cuticles.)

Write what your characters (people) need
People care about the most pressing needs of your characters. The more compelling these are, the more compelling your work. Follow these needs, and readers will follow your characters through your pages.

Cut to the chase
Write about what is the most essential to you.