Write

Articles about craft.

I Don't Tolerate Poor Grammar

by

This essay by Cheryl Connor originally appeared on Forbes on 10/21/12.

And I’m not alone. Even the Wall Street Journal agrees.

Poor grammar and writing is an epidemic in the workplace. While the era of social media and texting has caused many to believe it’s a problem they couldn’t resolve, a number of businesses are finally finding the nerve to crack down. A recent HBR article by Kyle Wiens, I Won’t Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar, noted wryly that in his company, anyone who thinks an apostrophe was one of the 12 apostles or who tosses commas around with the abandon of a shotgun would be fortunate to find their way to the foyer before he shows them the door.

His article drew 3,013 comments (ironically, many of them taking him to task for ending a sentence with a preposition and referring to “company” in the plural, a convention that while common in American English is apparently still frowned upon overseas.) Which brings up another point – have you ever noticed how much argument a discussion of grammar inspires? It seems the “grammar police” are most vigilant about the 1-2 archaic rules they hold dear, while they blithely break or ignore the dozens of rules they don’t know.

 

Read the full post on Forbes.

 

This Surprising Reading Level Analysis Will Change the Way You Write

by

This article by Shane Snow originally appeared on Contently on 1/28/15.

Ernest Hemingway is regarded as one of the world’s greatest writers. After running some nerdy reading level stats, I now respect him even more.

The other day, a friend and I were talking about becoming better writers by looking at the “reading levels” of our work. Scholars have formulas for automatically estimating reading level using syllables, sentence length, and other proxies for vocabulary and concept complexity. After the chat, just for fun, I ran a chapter from my book through the most common one, the Flesch-Kincaid index:

I learned, to my dismay, that I’ve been writing for 8th graders.

Curiosity piqued, I decided to see how I compared to the first famous writer that popped in my head: Hemingway. So I ran a reading level calculation on The Old Man and the Sea. That’s when I was really surprised:

Apparently, my man Ernest, the Pulitzer- and Nobel Prize-winning novelist whose work shaped 20th-century fiction, wrote for elementary-schoolers.

Upon learning this, I did the only thing a self-respecting geek could do at that point: I ran every bestselling writer I had on my Kindle through the machine.

 

Read the full post, which includes many informative graphs, on Contently.

 

The Writer's Plot Idea Generator

by

This tool is from Pantomimepony, where you can find many other such tools and resources.

random story ideas

This plot generator creates original and random storylines for plays, novels, short stories, soap opera, TV series or a movie script. The plotlines generated are not guaranteed to make sense but they do inspire writers by triggering a creative chain of thought. Most of the results might be off-the-wall but some are pure gold. Keep trying and sooner or later the perfect idea will appear. Some plots sound like a short story; some will fill a novel or could even be the start of a huge franchise.

 

Click here to use The Writer’s Plot Idea Generator.

 

Productivity For Writers: 5 Ways To Become More Productive

by

This post by Joanna Penn originally appeared on her The Creative Penn site on 1/29/15.

Some of the most common emails I receive every day include: How do I find the time to write? And how do you get everything done?

While I don’t write a book a month (at the moment!), I do get quite a lot done!

[Time poor and want to finish a book in 90 days? Click here for a free video series from Self-Publishing School.]

I published 4 new books in 2014 in ebook and print, plus I had another one completed and on pre-order, so technically 5 books in total. Plus, I published books in German, Spanish and Italian, as well as several in audio format, resulting in a total of 19 new products for sale in 2014.

Plus, a lot of blog posts and podcasts which I hope you found useful 🙂 So today, here are some of my tips on productivity for writers and a resource I think at least some of you will find useful.

 

(1) Schedule your time

We all have 24 hours in the day, and we all have to balance the real life stuff with the writing. Before I was a full-time author-entrepreneur, I would get up at 5am and write, then go to work. After the day job, I would come home and get on with building my online business. We got rid of the TV so I would have more time to create, and I spent every weekend working. I was so focused on leaving my job that I cut out everything that got in the way. I was driven to schedule my time incredibly well in order to fit everything in.

Now, as a full-time author-entrepreneur, I still have to schedule everything. You might have noticed that I blog, podcast and speak professionally, as well as writing books. It’s just as hard to get everything done, let me assure you!

So I’ll admit to being a chronic scheduler! But seriously, it is the only way I get anything done.

 

Read the full post, which includes five additional productivity tips, on The Creative Penn.

 

Music, Fiction, and the Value of Attention

by

This article by Nicholas Games originally appeared on The New Yorker on 1/27/15.

The protagonist of Richard Powers’s 2014 novel, “Orfeo,” is a composer named Peter Els who, late in life, begins to dabble in biotechnology. Els’s attempts to “compose” in DNA turn him into a suspected bioterrorist fleeing across the country; one of his furtive stops is Champaign, Illinois, where he attended graduate school. In a coffee shop that he remembers from his student days, Els recognizes Steve Reich’s 1995 “Proverb” coming from the speakers. In the bravura passage that follows, Powers describes the way that Els listens to the music:

Another modulation, and the ghosts disperse. He wants the piece to be over. Not because of the thrilling sameness: monotony could almost save him now. Because of the waves of connection lighting up long-dark regions in his head. He knows better, but can’t help it: these spinning, condensed ecstasies, this cascade of echoes, these abstract patterns without significance, this seamless breathing leaves him sure, one more time, of some lush design waiting for him.

In the long tradition of novels about music and musicians, this language is new. The listening being depicted is a cognitive event: it happens in the skull and leaps from synapse to synapse, as if it were registering on a brain scan. The imagery of the fMRI machine was, of course, unavailable to Marcel Proust or Thomas Mann, say, who thought of music more in cultural terms than in cognitive terms (though for Proust the subject was, like nearly everything else, intimately connected to memory). But this new language—the lighting up of regions in the head—resonates, because a kind of folk version of neuroscience has entered everyday speech. Nearly all of us now speak of “chemical imbalances,” hormone levels, and how this or that person is “wired.”

 

Read the full article on The New Yorker.

 

Susan Straight On Learning To Write Without A Room Of One's Own

by

This essay by Susan Straight originally appeared on the The Los Angeles Times on 4/9/14.

What does it take to be a writer: A room of one’s own? A weakness for words? To celebrate the Festival of Books, we asked five celebrated authors to recall a turning point in their evolution as writers. First up is Susan Straight, recipient of the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes’ 2013 Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement.

I wrote the stories in my first book by hand, in these places: at the counter of the Mobil station where I worked in 1979, between customers, eating beef jerky and stale cashews out of the nut mix no one ever bought from the cloudy glass compartments beneath my notebook; sitting on a huge rock at the beach in Rosarito, Mexico, in 1983 after my husband fell asleep in the tiny hotel where we spent our two-night honeymoon, writing in my notebook; sitting at a card table in married student housing in 1984 in Amherst with the small blue Smith-Corona my mother had given me for high school graduation; in a pale green 1980-something Fiat with brakes that went out all the time, upon which occasion my husband would have me sit in the driver’s seat and pump the brakes while he was underneath the car in the gravel driveway of our house back in Riverside in 1988, and I held a notebook and pen, writing.

 

Read the full essay on The Los Angeles Times.

 

The Secrets of Story Structure (Complete Series)

by

This post by K.M. Weiland originally appeared on her Helping Writers Become Authors site. Note that while it references K.M. Weiland’s book based on her Story Structure blog series, after you click through to view the full post you’ll find links to her original blog posts in the series there.

If there’s just one thing that matters to your success as a writer it’s story structure. Story structure is what allows authors to create stories that work every single time. Story structure is what allows you to quickly diagnose and remedy plot problems.

The fear that story structure is formulaic and difficult couldn’t be farther from the truth. Story structure changed my life. The moment the foundational principles of this all-important technique clicked into place for me was the moment I came of age as a writer. Now it’s your turn!

In the Secrets of Story Structure series (which is the basis for my award-winning book Structuring Your Novel: Essential Keys to Writing an Outstanding Story and its companion Structuring Your Novel Workbook), you’ll learn

  • Why structure is make-or-break territory for every novel
  • How to implement a strong three-act structure
  • How to bring your story to life
  • How to ensure your story built to have the greatest possible impact on readers.

 

Read the full post on Helping Writers Become Authors.

 

Corrections Are Good: How to Take Critique Like a Dancer

by

This post by Kim Bullock (link goes to a site for Carl Ahrens, a major character in her current novel) originally appeared on Writer Unboxed on 1/30/15.

My daughter, who had not known a plié from a tendu until age nine, was understandably terrified when she entered her first class at one of Dallas’ most prestigious classical ballet schools.

She had been the prima dancer during her one year at a beginner studio, performing front and center in the recital. “Work hard and you can go anywhere you want in the dance world,” her teacher had told her privately after ballet lesson number three. I was in the room at the time, and I watched that spark of a dream ignite in her eyes.

I feared her passion for dance might be snuffed out by trying to compete in a room full of girls who had been on tiptoe since toddlerhood, but my sensitive perfectionist emerged from class dry-eyed and grinning. She did chinés turns all the way back to the car, narrowly avoiding trash cans and hedges.

As she twirled, she rattled off an extensive list of things she had done wrong in class that day: everything from her hyper-extended elbows to her weak turnout and lazy fifth position. Her old teacher had apparently failed to correct her bad habits, so she would need to relearn everything

Though she did not seem upset in the least, I had to ask. “Did you receive any roses with all those thorns?”

“She didn’t name my butt. If it sticks out when you plié, she’ll give it an old man name,” my daughter explained. “The girl next to me was told to ‘put Fred away’ three times.”

 

Read the full post on Writer Unboxed.

 

Sex Scenes In Novels: Autobiographical or Imagined?

by

This article by Jon Stock originally appeared on The Telegraph on 3/5/13.

Authors risk the ridicule of friends whenever they write about sex, even if it’s pure fiction, says spy writer Jon Stock.

Authors are often urged to write about what they know, but does this apply to sex scenes? Should they be based on personal experience – cue sniggering from friends, family and fellow authors – or drawn from the realms of pure fantasy?

The novelist Julian Barnes claims in an article today that modern writers feel a commercial obligation to include sex scenes and then struggle to write them. Chief amongst their many fears is the assumption that readers will conclude they are in some way autobiographical.

According to Barnes: “Writing about sex contains an additional anxiety on top of all the usual ones that the writer might be giving him- or herself away, that readers may conclude, when you describe a sexual act, that it must already have happened to you in pretty much the manner described.”

I noticed that people began to look at me in a very different way after the publication of my 2009 espionage thriller, Dead Spy Running. The genre has certain requirements: exotic locations, gritty hero, labyrinthine plotting and, of course, sex.

 

Read the full post on The Telegraph.

 

Self Editing for Fiction #9 ~ Sophistication

by

This post by Stef Mcdaid originally appeared on WriteIntoPrint in October of 2014.

Sliding off of his bunk, Richard slipped on a dirty T-shirt that lay on the floor and hastily acquired a fresh pair of boxer shorts from his bedside table before circumnavigating the accumulated piles of junk strewn all over his bedroom floor to find out who the f*ck was bothering him at this ungodly hour. Ricky was not the tidiest of people, and certainly not a morning person.
As he looked at his Rolex Cosmograph Daytona wristwatch, he went into the kitchen and splashed some water over his pounding head. If only that f*cking jerk would stop ringing the doorbell! he thought.

This passage I cobbled together contains quite a few style sins. I will list them in order.

 

‘as’ and ‘-ing’ constructions: starting too many sentences with these is nowadays regarded as hack writing by some industry professionals – plus, the simultaneity they sometimes suggest makes many of them technically impossible. In the first sentence Richard dons a T-shirt and rummages in his bedside table *at the same time* as he slides off his bunk. Similarly, in the second paragraph he’s looking at his wristwatch all the while he’s going to the kitchen and splashing water over his head. There are, of course, instances where they are suitable, but be careful not to overdo their use, and look out for simultaneity paradoxes.

 

Word order:

 

Read the full post on Write Into Print.

 

Setting Up A Regular Writing Schedule

by

This post originally appeared on Creative Caravan Club on 1/8/15.

Are you trying to write a novel within the next few weeks or months, but you just can’t seem to stick to a regular writing schedule?

The following tips will work for anyone who wants to write a book within a short period of time:

 

1. Set up your writing time as a regular appointment with yourself.

Plan specific times you will write each week, then write down these times on a calendar or day planner, just the way you would any other appointment.

 

2. Break down your novel, short story, or article into small chunks.

If you’re writing a novel, break down each chapter into scenes. Then schedule time to write just one scene at a time.

 

3. Give yourself some slack while you’re committed to completing a big writing project, like writing a book.

Save some of your other writing for later. You want to plan, start and finish your book within a short period of time. You won’t be able to do that if you also try to write a million other things.

 

Read the full post on Creative Caravan Club.

 

Fired Old Man Angry at World, Ranting About Something or Other

by

This post by Ken Wheaton originally appeared on The Word O’ Wheaton on 1/18/15.

Leon Wieseltier, recently run out of The New Republic as a gang of Silicon Valley nitwits took over and tried to fix it, has a piece in The New York Times Sunday Book Review that starts thusly:

Amid the bacchanal of disruption, let us pause to honor the disrupted. The streets of American cities are haunted by the ghosts of bookstores and record stores, which have been destroyed by the greatest thugs in the history of the culture industry. Writers hover between a decent poverty and an indecent one; they are expected to render the fruits of their labors for little and even for nothing, and all the miracles of electronic dissemination somehow do not suffice for compensation, either of the fiscal or the spiritual kind. Everybody talks frantically about media, a second-order subject if ever there was one, as content disappears into “content.” What does the understanding of media contribute to the understanding of life? Journalistic institutions slowly transform themselves into silent sweatshops in which words cannot wait for thoughts, and first responses are promoted into best responses, and patience is a professional liability. As the frequency of expression grows, the force of expression diminishes: Digital expectations of alacrity and terseness confer the highest prestige upon the twittering cacophony of one-liners and promotional announcements. It was always the case that all things must pass, but this is ridiculous.

I’m sure after reading that bit of succinct and too-the-point prose, you’re just dying to read the rest of it. Good luck with that. You see, Leon is what I’d call a writer’s writer — or, as he’s also known, the “last of the New York intellectuals” — someone much more interested in showing off — his skill, his education or his connections — than getting to the point already. There is, of course, a way to do both without looking like you’re trying to hard to do either. But Leon, who IS a smart guy whose writing I’ve enjoyed in the past, isn’t getting it done here. He also seems to be suffering from selective historical amnesia.

 

Read the full post (which is actually about the need for editors) on The Word O’ Wheaton.

 

Science Fiction Romance – Caught Between A Rock And A Hard Place

by

This post by Greta van der Rol originally appeared on her blog on 1/20/15.

Talking about what constitutes ‘romance’ seems to be a bit like climbing over the fence into the lions’ compound knowing they haven’t been fed for a while. But I have to say I find the debate a little bit perplexing when it comes to the genre I mostly write – science fiction romance.

On the one hand, the born-again romance readers insist that without a HEA (happily ever after ending, for those not in the know) or at the very least a HFN (Happy For Now) then the story doesn’t qualify as ‘romance’. On the other hand there’s more than a suggestion from the science fiction fraternity (I use the word deliberately) that all that soppy love stuff doesn’t belong in science fiction.

I’m not really a romance reader and I’d be the first to say that my stories are SF action/adventure with a strong romance arc. Mostly. I think. And we get back to the old question of genre.

Back in the very recent past we didn’t have a science fiction romance genre. You had a choice: science fiction or romance. So you took your chances. Have your book panned by the hard-line SFers who didn’t want any of the smulchy squishy stuff, or have your book panned by the romance die-hards who protested your story wasn’t a romance because it wasn’t the raison d’etre of the plot.

Let’s consider my latest effort, Crisis at Validor, because… just because.

Is it a romance?

 

Read the full post on Greta van der Rol’s blog.

 

Fanfiction Made Me a Better Feminist

by

This post by Anna Andersen originally appeared on Medium on 1/17/15.

I write about gay relationships between fictional characters. Here’s why other women should take that seriously.

My best writing, the stuff I’m most proud of, is also the writing that makes me the most ashamed. It shouldn’t have to be that way.

I’ve been a writer since I knew what the word meant: poems and short stories and unfinished novels litter first notebooks, then hard drives into my young adulthood. I’ve got bona fides to spare: half an MFA in creative writing, published poetry in my twenties, essays and book reviews on my CV.

But I didn’t find my creative voice until recently, when I started working in the least respected genre imaginable: fanfiction. Specifically, slash fiction — erotic stories about same-sex fictional characters. My slash of choice is Dean Winchester and Castiel, Angel of the Lord, from the TV show Supernatural, a pairing referred to in fandom by the handy portmanteau “Destiel.” In fandom parlance, I “ship Destiel”: in my stories, Dean and Castiel fall in love over and over again. Sometimes, their romance takes place in the world of the show, but often it’s set in alternate worlds where they’re firefighters or teachers or high school kids, baristas or bartenders or bakers. Wherever they are, whoever they are, they end up together, and usually have explicit sex along the way.

 

Read the full post on Medium.

 

Oxford University Press Bans Mention of Pork and Pigs in Books to 'Avoid Offending Muslims or Jews'

by

This post by Ewan Palmer originally appeared on International Business Times on 1/14/15.

One of the biggest education publishers in the world has warned its authors not to mention pigs or sausages in their books to avoid causing offence.

Oxford University Press (OUP) said all books must take into consideration other cultures if they hope to sell copies in countries across the world.

As a result, the academic publisher has issued guidance advising writers to avoid mentioning pigs or “anything else which could be perceived as pork” so as not to offend Muslim or Jewish people.

The move was revealed during a discussion on free speech during BBC Radio 4’s Today programme in the wake of the attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hedbo and its decision to use an image of the Prophet Mohammed on the cover of its latest issue.

 

Read the full post on International Business Times.