Punctuation in a story is like the spice in a soup. When we’re sipping that soup off our spoons, we’re not likely to notice or identify every spice that has created the uniquely delicious flavor caressing our taste buds. Same goes for punctuation. When shaken out with a skillful hand, the very effectiveness of punctuation […]
June 12, 2011 by 27 Comments Prose4 Tricks for Picking the Perfect Word
One of Charles Schulz’s incisive “Snoopy at the typewriter” strips from his Peanuts cartoon features poor ol’ Snoopy laboring away, sweating and smacking himself in the forehead. Finally, he turns to his typewriter and taps out, “The.” With a lofty look, he explains, “A good writer will sometimes search hours for just the right word.” […]
March 20, 2011 by 66 Comments Most Common Writing MistakesMost Common Writing Mistakes: Why Vague Writing Is Weak Writing
Vague writing is weak writing. Precision is the domain of the skilled and confident author. As the creator of your worlds and your characters, you will always have the ability to make statements of authority in your writing. After all, if you’re not the authority in your stories, who is? What this means is that […]
February 16, 2011 by 20 Comments ProseAre You Overusing Passive Verbs?
In narrative writing, active verbs are usually preferable to passive verbs for the simple reason that the active voice offers more options for bringing a sentence to life and infusing it with… action! Although passive verbs certainly have their place, it’s good to remind ourselves from time to time of how much more power we […]
February 2, 2011 by 6 Comments ProseAre You Guilty of These 8 Common Grammar Mistakes?
Grammar. Some of us love it, some of us hate it. Either way, it’s an inevitability all writers have to deal with. Your story may be the best thing since ink first hit paper, but if you’ve confused your homonyms and mixed up your pronouns, readers aren’t likely to battle their way past your first […]
August 25, 2010 by 21 Comments Prose3 (Brief) Benefits of Writing With Brevity
Ernest Hemingway is famed for his sparse prose. Love his style or hate it, the man knew how to say what needed saying in the fewest words possible. In reading his World War I tragedy A Farewell to Arms, I was able to study the three main benefits of writing with brevity. The 3 Main […]
July 4, 2010 by 69 Comments Prose5 Pros and Cons of Using the Thesaurus
Writers are surprisingly divided over the value of using the thesaurus. Some consider it their secret weapon; others regard it as a crutch. So which is it? Stephen King’s opinion, from his 1988 essay “Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully—in Ten Minutes” is now well known: Any word you have to hunt for […]
July 19, 2009 by 22 Comments Prose3 Ways to Make Cliches Work in Your Writing
True story: Sometime last year, I encountered a man named Howard (name changed to protect the not-so-innocent) who had written a fantasy novel that he couldn’t seem to sell. And he just couldn’t understand it. “My work is 100-percent cliché free! I hate, loathe, and despise clichés. I’ve scoured my work and eliminated every single […]
June 21, 2009 by 60 Comments ProseWhy Authors Should Be Using the BIG Words
I’m a vocabulary nut. I admit it. I love words. Little words, big words, unusual words, archaic words. In high school, I kept a piece of paper in the front of whatever book I was reading, so I could write down unfamiliar words and look them up the next day. Whenever I looked up a word, I underlined it, and […]
May 31, 2009 by 36 Comments ProseActive Voice vs. Passive Voice: How to Use Both to Get the Most Out of Your Writing
Most of us learned about sentences in grammar school. Most of us also promptly forgot all about them after grammar school. This is why, I presume, the art of correctly using the active voice and the passive voice in our fiction is something almost all of us have to relearn at some point in our […]
