Summary of "Stop Making These 3 Prose Mistakes!"

Summary of Stop Making These 3 Prose Mistakes!

The video focuses on common prose mistakes writers make when trying to create an emotional impact on readers. Drawing from 18 years of experience coaching over 500 memoir writers, the speaker explains why these mistakes fail and offers practical advice on how to write prose that truly affects readers emotionally. The lessons apply equally to memoirs and novels.

Main Ideas and Lessons

Goal of Prose: The primary goal of prose is to affect the reader emotionally. However, many new writers unintentionally do the opposite by using ineffective techniques.
Applicability: Although the speaker specializes in memoir writing, the principles discussed apply broadly to all prose, including novels.

Mistake #1: Using Emotion Words to Convey Emotion

What are Emotion Words? Adjectives that directly state feelings (e.g., sad, happy, furious, joyous).
Why They Don’t Work:
- They tell the reader what the character feels but don’t make the reader feel the emotion themselves.
- Example ineffective sentences:
  - “I feel more and more terrified.”
  - “I am joyous on the day of my wedding.”
Key Insight: Emotion words communicate emotion intellectually but fail to create an emotional experience.

Mistake #2: Using Bodily Sensations as Emotional Stand-ins

Examples of Bodily Sensations:
- “My heart began pounding.”
- “Adrenaline coursed through my veins.”
- “My palms began to sweat.”
Problems with Bodily Sensations:
- They are generic and cliché descriptions.
- They serve as shortcuts that make writing sound amateurish.
- Like emotion words, they inform the reader about the emotion but don’t evoke it.
How to Fix This:
1. Strip out emotion words and bodily sensations from your writing initially.
2. Replace them with subjective writing:
  - Subjective writing involves the character’s internal thoughts, interpretations, and reactions—things a camera wouldn’t capture.
  - Example: Instead of “I’m terrified,” write what the character thinks or fears in response to the situation.
  - This puts the reader inside the character’s mind, making them experience the emotion indirectly but more powerfully.
When Bodily Sensations Can Work:
- When describing actual physical pain or sensations that are not stand-ins for emotion (e.g., medical symptoms).
- When bodily sensations are explicitly tied to objective facts rather than feelings (e.g., hooked up to an EKG machine).

Clarification on Using Emotion Words

Emotion words can be effective when used as part of subjective interpretation from a narrator’s point of view, not as direct statements of feeling.

Example: “She seemed terribly sad.” (Narrator’s interpretation of another character, not a direct statement of feeling.)

Mistake #3: Separating the Self from Body Parts in Action Descriptions

Examples of Problematic Writing:
- “My foot pressed down on the gas pedal.”
- “My hand reached out to reassure him.”
- “My nose detected a strange smell.”
Why This is a Problem:
- It makes the body parts seem autonomous, disconnected from the character.
- This creates an insincere or detached tone.
How to Fix This:
- Make the self the subject of the sentence:
  - “I pressed my foot down on the gas pedal.”
  - “I reached out my hand to reassure him.”
  - “I detected a strange smell.”
Exception:
- When the intention is to show disconnection from one’s body (e.g., intoxication, possession, or dissociation), it’s appropriate to describe body parts acting independently.

Additional Notes

The speaker plugs their book, The Memoir Engineering System, which offers detailed guidance on creating plot and structure in memoir writing.
The video ends by encouraging viewers to learn more about using scenes and transitions to build story plot.

Summary of Methodology / Instructions

Avoid using direct emotion words to state feelings.
Avoid generic bodily sensations as emotional shortcuts.
Use subjective writing to share the character’s internal thoughts and interpretations.
Make the character (self) the subject when describing bodily actions.
Use bodily sensations only when describing actual physical states, not as emotional substitutes.
Use emotion words only as part of subjective interpretation, not direct emotional statements.
Allow exceptions for body-part separation when depicting disconnection or loss of control.

Speakers / Sources Featured

Primary Speaker: The memoir writing coach and author (name not provided in the subtitles).
Craig Clevenger: Novelist and author of The Contortionist’s Handbook, referenced for insight on body-part writing.
Christa: Client who asked a question during a Q&A session mentioned in the video.
Michael Kane: Referenced in an example about a hand (likely from a cited work or metaphor).
Unidentified voices: Short quoted lines (“Look, I’m Picasso,” “A man trapped in a nightmare,” “Why are you looking at me like that?”) appear to be illustrative or dramatized examples, not identified speakers.

This video is a practical guide for writers aiming to improve emotional resonance in their prose by avoiding common pitfalls and focusing on immersive, subjective storytelling techniques.