Using American Idol to Help with Writing
By Janice Seagraves
I’ve been watching American Idol, and aside from the various antics from the cast and contestants, it’s been interesting.
In the Los Vegas round of critiques, I noticed that the judges’ use sentences to describe the singer's performances such as: engaging the audience, feeling the emotion of the song, and getting chills.
I thought about writing as I watched the show and how singers practice their craft by taking lessons and practicing, and writers take workshops/classes and write and read a great deal in order to hone their craft.
Make no mistake; writing is a craft just like singing is.
With both you have to practice, practice, practice. And practice some more.
As writers, we want the same things: to engage our readers or hook them, we want them to feel the emotion of what our characters go through in the story line, and we’d love our readers to get chills as they read our books.
With singing, the vocalist looks out into the audience, making eye contact to engage the audience. While writing, we can’t see our readers, but authors try to engage our readers by writing an exciting beginning to our stories that’ll hook our reader.
For a performer to show emotions while they sing, they need to feel the emotion of the song by allowing the emotion to show on their faces. In other words, if the song is sad, the singer will feel sad and show that emotion. If it’s happy, then they’ll smile. While writers, show the emotion of their characters by a written description of the feelings. In other words, showing and not telling.
As for the chills, performers and authors both hope for the maximum delivery of their talent and skills, in hopes that their audience can appreciate it and receive the desire effect.
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