Use This Advanced Technique to Take Your Writing to New Levels

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Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed

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Creative Writers – do you know how to use inference? Read this article to sharpen your skills!

Creative Writers Use Inference to Say More by Saying Less

All creative writers use inference, whether by choice or by accident. You may think, “If I’m using it by accident, why should I spend my time studying it? You need to study it until you are able to use inference at will.

This is inference:

Mary was in labor. A monkey was born.

Inference is a common tool used by all creative writers. On the surface, one could assume the following:

A woman had mated with a monkey and got pregnant
She went to the hospital to give birth
Her baby wasn’t a child, it was a monkey
It was a historical event
This event would open new doors to the medical community and scientists
The news media would hound the monkey child throughout its life
Documentaries would undoubtedly be created
A movie would be in the making

Thoughts would flood your mind. Did the woman visit Africa and take a safari? Perhaps an ape or a monkey mated with her? Was her hubby with her when it happened? Or was she even married? How is her family going to accept the monkey-baby? Does it have any human characteristics?

Or, if you read it in the same way I was thinking: Mary went into labor, but she also owned a monkey. Do you see what inference can do?

Mystery writers often drop clues that will lead their readers in the wrong direction. Other uses of inference could be in games and jokes.

Readers almost ask to be mislead, and that is what inference does. The reader’s mind will automatically come to its own conclusions, based on what it has read. If the author has the inclination, he can change the mental picture within a sentence.

Another example:

The bride collapsed in tears, and could not be consoled.

We might think:

The groom didn’t show up for the wedding
Someone dropped the wedding cake
The organist or preacher could not be there

We could imagine all sorts of things, but what I’m actually thinking is that her father died of a heart attack during the wedding. From what I said, however, it is unlikely that anyone would grasp that meaning. The reader will plant their own understanding into incomplete evidence and they will assume the wrong thing. Using inference is easy; the trick is to learn to do it at will.

Inference is a great tool. You could even infer that a man is having an affair with his sister-in-law, and never say that. The reader may think they are having an affair, and that hubby hasn’t learned about it yet. If you introduce a gun into the equation, you can infer someone is going to die as a result.

Inference will help you say less and yet say more.

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