Composition is the way a writer crafts words, sentences, and paragraphs to create a coherent work that best expresses the story’s theme.
Just like a musician and an artist, a writer sets the tone of a composition to his or her purpose, making decisions about what that tone should be to support the structure and plot of the story.
Composition sets in once the story has been conceptualised, the thematic intention and genre fully explored, characters defined and developed, and the story has been structured, plotted and outlined, with a rough first draft.
This is where the story gets written with serious intention and complete dedication.
There are four modes of composition:
- A description, or descriptive writing makes a clear statement about its subject. A description doesn’t speculate or offer up opinions or interpretations. It simply states the facts. It’s a statement or account that describes something or someone, listing characteristic features and significant details to provide a reader with a portrayal in words. Descriptions are set in the concrete, in the reality, or solidity of an object as a representation of a person, place, or thing in time. They provide the look and feel of objects, a simultaneous whole, with as many details as you’d like.
- Exposition or expository writing is an interpretation of the facts. It’s the act of expounding or explaining a person, place, thing, or eventIt expands on a description by introducing additional facts that shed light on how the subject fits into a larger discussion. It might explore related facts and what they imply and/or pivot to related topics through thoughtful transition sentences and extrapolation. It’s still grounded in fact; an exposition doesn’t include its author’s opinions on the subject.
- Narration is the mode of writing that presents the author’s point of view. The writing is still about its subject rather than its author, but it discusses and explores the subject through the author’s description of their experience.
- In an argumentation composition, the writer presents two or more positions on an issue and, through a logical exploration of each, demonstrates why one position is the best choice. an argumentation is basically an exercise in comparing and contrasting. It is the methodological presentation of both sides of an argument using logical or formal reasoning.
In The Write Journey course we explore the art of composition
- Unity and variety: A story, even when expressing chaos, must be unified. Unity is critical. Within this unity we must induce as much variety as possible. You don’t want to hit the same note over and over again, so that every scene sounds like every other.
- Pacing: The reader / audience has two desires: Serenity, harmony, peace , and relaxation & challenge, tension, danger, thrills. The writer must alternate between tension and relaxation.
- Rhythm and tempo: In a well told story the progression of scenes and sequences accelerates pace. The writer takes advantage of rhythm and tempo to progressively shorten scenes while the activity in them becomes more and more brisk. You have to control rhythm and tempo.Rhythm is set by the length of the scenes. How long are we in the same time and the same place? Tempo is the level of activity within the scene via dialogue, action or a combination.
- Progression: How will the reader sense when a story genuinely progresses?
- Social progression widens the impact of character actions into society. As the story progresses the actions of the characters will spiral outwards into the world around them, touching and changing the lives of more and more people.
- Personal progression: The action is found in intimate relationships and lives of the characters; the story will begin with a personal or inner conflict that seems relatively solvable; as the story progresses we delve deeper, working the story downward – emotionally, psychologically, and mentally – to the dark secrets, the unspoken truths.
- Symbolic progression: Symbolism is very compelling and invades the unconscious mind, touching us deeply; the story will begin with actions, locations and roles that are familiar; as the story progresses, images gather greater meaning, until at the end of the story the characters, events and settings stand for universal ideas.
- Ironic progression: It sees life in duality and plays with paradoxical existence; verbal irony is found in the discrepancy between words and their meaning; irony plays between actions and
results; it is the primary source of story energy, between appearance and reality, the primary source of truth and emotion.
- Reversals: A reversal is one of the most important tools a writer can use. It’s a ‘change of the actions to their opposite’. A reversal is when something good turns bad, something bad changes to good. As a result, it spins off the plot into a new and often startling way. Because it’s unexpected, a strong reversal surprises the audience / readers. It helps keep them guessing about what will happen next as well as the outcome of the story. Since the reversal changes the direction of the action, the protagonist cannot go ahead as planned, instead must deal with the situation created by the reversal. A reversal always leads to new and unexpected development.
- Turning Points: If you want to continuously move the story forward, and advance the dramatic line of development, you have to constantly keep on turning the story like a screw, tightening it to achieve maximum dramatic impact and value.
- Transitional Values: A story without a sense of progression tends to stumble from one event to the next. It has little continuity because nothing links its events. Transitions mark the passage of time and the link between scenes and sequences and have to be conceived visually; moving the action from one scene to the next requires a visual transition.
How to structure Turning Points and the Impact of Turning Points, as well as how to implement Transitional Values in a story are fully explored in The Write Journey Course.