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The first draft of your book is where the ‘writing’ really begins. You can spend years imagining a story – planning out the setting, building up the world, marinating in the minds of your characters – but until there are words on a page, it’s all theoretical. This is why authors, editors, and agents alike give budding writers the same advice; start writing. None of the rest of it matters until you …
[Read more...] about Is It Better To Be A Hopper Or A Marcher?
Ask most authors for their advice on storytelling and, sooner or later, they’re likely to get to the subject of conflict. To many writers, conflict is the basic unit of story – the thing that turns a series of events into an actual narrative – often more important than setting, characters, and even narrative cohesion. After all, you can lose all of those features and still write something that …
[Read more...] about Can You Really Tell A Compelling Story Without Conflict?
The term ‘synecdoche’ is unwieldy, even unfriendly, but it describes a useful literary device that you’re probably already using at various levels of your writing, from the concepts behind your story to the way you phrase certain sentences. Good synecdoche has a lot of uses, but when it turns bad, it has a uniquely goofy way of screwing up your writing. That’s why, in today’s article, we’ll be …
[Read more...] about What Authors Like You Need To Know About The Use (And Misuse) Of Synecdoche
The English language can do some trippy things if you let it. Take your eye off a sentence and, before you know it, it could become oxymoronic, tautological, or even malapropistic. For many types of writer, it’s enough to be able to avoid these foibles, but authors need more than that – they need to be able to turn them into tools. That’s why, in this article, we’ll be looking at …
[Read more...] about Oxymoron, Tautology, Or Malapropism? What You Need To Know
As a rule, writers have a pretty solid grasp of how to use words. Of course, when we slip up, that just makes it all the more embarrassing, and a certain type of critic loves nothing more than pointing out even the smallest error. Someone who’s supposed to know all about words getting them wrong? How ironic! Actually… is that ironic? If you’re capable of giving a definitive answer, …
[Read more...] about What Writers Like You Need To Know About Irony And Sarcasm
By the end of the Coen Brothers’ The Hudsucker Proxy, things are looking bad for the protagonist. Corrupted by unearned power and driven to desperation by the antagonist, he jumps from the window of his office, tumbling towards the city streets. There’s nothing he can do to avert his fate, the movie hasn’t set up any way of saving him, and then... time stops. The hero blinks, unable to …
[Read more...] about What Is Deus Ex Machina, And Do I Need To Avoid It?
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