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 […]
March 6, 2011 by 56 Comments Editing Your Novel3 Things I Love Lucy Can Teach You About Writing Tics
Quick, what annoying trait do writers and I Love Lucy share? In the classic episode “In Palm Springs,” Lucy and her gang drive each other up the wall with their irritating habits: Ricky’s finger tapping, Lucy’s coffee stirring, Ethel’s noisy eating, and Fred’s key jingling. Writers aren’t much different. We tap, stir, slurp, and jingle […]
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 […]
February 2, 2011 by Leave a Comment Writing Life5 Writing Rules You Should Break
Today, I’m guest posting on Victoria Mixon’s blog with the post “5 Writing Rules You Should Break“: Writers and pirates have more in common than you might think. Aside from the truth that we all enjoy roaring out a hearty, “ahoy, matey,” now and then, the biggest commonality is the fact that neither of us […]
April 25, 2010 by 63 Comments Editing Your Novel10 Ways to Write Skinny Sentences
If brevity is the soul of wit, then economy is the energy of prose. Let’s hear it for skinny sentences! Don’t get me wrong: I love complex, twisty, beautiful sentences. As Aleksandar Hemon pointed out in an interview with The Writer magazine: I like to push language toward poetry, to activate the dormant possibilities inherent in it. […]
July 12, 2009 by 43 Comments Narrative5 Ways to Use Pacing to Write a Powerful Story
Pacing is like a dam. It allows the writer to control just how fast or how slow his plot flows through the riverbed of his story. Understanding how to operate that dam–how to pace your story–is one of the most important tasks an author can learn. Without this skill, you end up writing stories that variously lack […]
May 31, 2009 by 37 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 […]
August 24, 2008 by 20 Comments DescriptionThe 3 Must-Know Rules for Using Metaphors and Similes
I love using metaphors. I admit it. I love the paradox that sometimes the best way to evoke the essence of something is to describe something else. I love finding that perfect comparison between two seemingly incomparable subjects and thereby shedding new light on one or both subjects. I love the poetry of speaking metaphorically, […]
April 6, 2008 by 17 Comments ProseKill the Big Ugly Modifier!
Among writers, one of the ever-quotable Mark Twain’s most quoted witticisms is the succinct bit of advice found in Pudd’nhead Wilson: As to the Adjective: When in doubt, strike it out. Ah, adjectives! What writer hasn’t had a joyous fling or two with that most seductive of all parts of speech? In an effort to […]
