Paragraph breaks are something akin to a writer’s turn signals. They silently—sometimes almost subliminally—tell readers what’s about to happen and how they should react. As you may remember (or not) from school, a paragraph break in technical writing is meant to indicate a new thought. (I have clear memories of being required to find and […]
February 11, 2019 by 73 Comments ProseCritique: How to Use Paragraph Breaks to Guide the Reader’s Experience
October 15, 2018 by 95 Comments ProseWords Are Radical! (or, How to Cherish Language)
Years ago, I was hiking with someone around the Scotts Bluff National Monument in western Nebraska. A bird flew over our heads, black against a metallic July sky. A lover of all things beautiful, my hiking partner was the first to point it out. I shaded my eyes. “Cool. What do think it is?” He […]
April 2, 2018 by 55 Comments ProseHow to Decide Between Plain Prose and Beautiful Prose
Truth is beauty. Beauty is truth. This is perhaps nowhere more evident than in art, which deliberately and consciously explores both. Words, in particular, are the explicit context in which humanity presents, investigates, and shares its truth. Perhaps more than any other art form, writing gives us a blatant venue for exploring the truth side […]
March 2, 2018 by 25 Comments Prose6 (More) Ways to Improve Your Book by Writing Humor
Humor is like any other type of writing: setup, payoff, setup, payoff, lather, rinse, repeat. That’s all there is to it! Okay, that’s not all there is to it. Humor is a craft that can be learned and perfected. With that in mind, let’s look at how a joke is crafted. How to Write Funny: Set […]
February 26, 2018 by 79 Comments ProseDon’t Write Scenes–Write Images
When you think about it, the transformative power of the written word is no less phenomenal than the technological miracles of computers, televisions, and smarts phones. Both are alchemy. Technology uses wires and circuits to turn code into the wonder of light and color. Writing does exactly the same thing. Little black squiggles on the […]
November 6, 2017 by 73 Comments Most Common Writing MistakesMost Common Writing Mistakes, Pt. 63: Purple Prose
Words, glorious words! Fellow logophiles, were we not initially drawn to writing because of our sesquipedal amours? We love words. We love big words, arcane words, chewy words, beautiful words. We love combinations of words that are bold, poetic, eloquent, and sometimes even showy. So it’s little wonder many of us risk creating purple prose. […]
September 14, 2015 by 81 Comments Prose8 Paragraph Mistakes You Don’t Know You’re Making
Words, sentences, and paragraphs–they’re the bricks and mortar of the writing craft. They’re fundamental. If we’re not using them correctly, it doesn’t matter how wonderful our mastery of characters and story structure may be. They’re make-or-break territory. Not long ago, a Wordplayer messaged me, asking if I could write a post on paragraph mistakes. She explained, […]
August 10, 2015 by 33 Comments Prose4 Methods to Invigorate Your Prose With Surprising Sentences
Good storytelling is all about the big pieces: structure, character, theme. But good writing? That’s much more intricate, much more intimate. Good writing is about creating purposeful and interesting prose. Creating prose of that caliber starts with the mechanics of grammar and spelling. But any middle-schooler is supposed to be able to do that. The art of […]
February 27, 2015 by 52 Comments ProseTo Be or Not To Be: In Defense of the Passive Voice
Recently, one of my critique partners asserted that any use of the verb to be formed the passive voice and deserved to be stamped out with as much vigor as possible. This got me to thinking about that misunderstood verb form and the use of passive voice in modern fiction. All of my critique partners […]
September 21, 2014 by 67 Comments ProseYou’ve Been Writing Sentences Wrong All Your Life! Find Out Why
The sentence. It’s the building block of all books. Without it, we may have a poem, a song, a movie, a painting, an interpretative dance. But we sure as scuttlebutt don’t have a book. Most of us learn how to write (and diagram!) sentences in grade school. Out of the many potential pitfalls of writing a […]
