Character study…
Some people do not have a volume switch.
Or, to be more precise, there are some people whose volume switch is stuck at ten.
Or eleven. (more…)
Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category
Not Listening
Posted in Culture, Writing, tagged Characters, creative writing, editing, novel writing, publishing, Writing, writing techniques on 20 Mar 2014| 4 Comments »
Revise and Extend
Posted in Writing, tagged creative writing, editing, memoir, novel writing, revision letters, Writing, writing techniques, writing tips on 13 Feb 2014| Leave a Comment »
Letters are nice things to get in the mail.
I’m not talking about bills or street-spam from your local dentist. I mean letters. Honest to God Letters, written by a person, meant for you and you alone.
Well, mostly…
There’s one kind of letter that I hate to get:
The Revision Letter.
I’ve Got Rhythm
Posted in Writing, tagged creative writing, editing, heroic couplets, novel writing, sentence structure and rhythm, Writing, writing techniques, writing tips on 06 Feb 2014| Leave a Comment »
I do not care for the heroic couplet.
daDa-daDa-daDa-daDa-daDee,
daDa-daDa-daDa-daDa-daDee.
It’s fine for a short poem or sonnet, but when you stack one atop the other for stanza after stanza, it gets predictable, monotonous, and boring. It’s why A Midsummer Night’s Dream is my least favorite of Shakespeare’s plays, as a huge portion of it is written in heroic couplets.
What does this have to do with writing prose? Plenty.
A Penny in my Pocket
Posted in Writing, tagged believable characters, building believable characters, Characters, creative writing, luck, lucky penny, Writing on 30 Jan 2014| 4 Comments »
I don’t really believe in luck.
At least, I don’t believe in luck as something we can affect. Things happen; sometimes they’re good, sometimes they’re not. People who we think have “good luck” are just folks who make better decisions than others. People who have repeated “bad luck” are usually not paying close enough attention to what’s going on around them. Beyond that, it’s just the randomness of life. Stuff happens.
So, why do I have a “lucky penny?”
Odd Ducks
Posted in Writing, tagged creative writing, editing, odd words, Reading, Writing on 17 Jan 2014| 8 Comments »
It’s happened to us all. That moment when a word–a perfectly innocuous, everyday word–suddenly looks weird.
It happened to me the other day. The word was “dirt.” I wrote it down and suddenly it looked misspelled. I stared at it. I tried “durt,” but that was even worse. Dirt. Dirt.
Dirt.
Oddly, when I wrote “dirty,” that looked okay, but “dirt” still looked…wrong. Truncated. Too tall. Too narrow.
Last year, I had a similar episode with the word “schedule.” We haven’t gotten along, since.
Thankfully, these episodes are transitory. Eventually, usually within an hour, the word loses its alien quality and becomes once more a regular, banal word from my daily lexicon.
Except, that is, for the “odd ducks.” (more…)
Babies and Bathwater
Posted in Books, Writing, tagged beta reader, beta readers, editing, novel writing, self-publishing, ten year run, todd baker, Writing, writing techniques, writing tips on 14 Jan 2014| 1 Comment »
If you don’t have one, you need one. In fact, you need several.
I’m talking about beta readers, those folks you lure/ wheedle/ cajole/ beg/ entrap into reading your baby, promising them anything from sex to chocolate to whisky—for the record, that last one is the coin of my realm—in order to get their input, their take, their particular and specific impressions.
This weekend, I received the draft copy of a new memoir from the talented, wry, and always engaging Todd Baker, whose first book, Ten Year Run: A Marathoning Memoir, I was lucky enough to beta-read. His new work, about his lifelong love of heavy metal music, promises to be a hell of a lot of fun, not to mention a good dose of humor in a difficult time.
I’m lucky, also, in that Todd is one of my beta readers. (more…)
Who I Read and Why
Posted in Books, Writing, tagged books, Characters, creative writing, favorite authors, favorite books, gabriel garcia marquez, Marcel Proust, reading lists, Shakespeare, William Shakespeare, Writing, writing tips on 06 Jan 2014| 9 Comments »
Writers aren’t like normal people.
When writers read–be it a book, an article, or sometimes even a headline–we study, parse, and edit. We re-word what we read (“It would be better like this”), we laugh out loud at ugly phrases (“He threw up his hands”), and we will kick a book across the room before we’ll read another page filled with moronic characters and Swiss cheese plots.
This can take a lot of the enjoyment out of reading, but on the flip side, there are joys in reading only writers can experience. We have WIWI moments (“Wish I’d Written It!”) and can find ecstasy in a well-wrought sentence or a surprising image.
We also learn from reading. We learn a lot.
