Ringing the Bell When I was a kid at Saint Lucy’s Catholic Church, the altar boys used to ring a little golden bell when the priest raised the host. I watched from my wooden pew and wondered if that was the moment when the miracle happened, when the host changed from bread to flesh. …
Category Archives: Improve Your Craft
Lie vs. Lay
(Skip to tips on how to “get it right.”) Dear lie, You are going to become extinct, and it’s your own fault for overlapping your past tense with another word’s present tense. I mean, seriously, who does that? I do love you, but my money’s on lay to consume you. Sorry! Dear reader, Do you …
What Does Your Music Reveal about You?
Do you have an iPod or similar audio player? Try this: put your device on shuffle/random, and write down the first 10 tracks that play. Post them in the comments if you’re willing! What does this collection say about you? Think about one of your characters. What tracks would play on this person’s device (if …
No Enterprise
Warning: This essay contains a very minor spoiler (not plot significant) for the third book in the Bloody Jack series. I’m in the movie theater watching Star Trek: Beyond. I haven’t gone in blind, and I’m finding much to complain about. But although my mind is churning on dialogue problems and weird plot choices, my …
We Welcome All Writing
At Write to the End, we do two main activities: We write, and we welcome all writing. These two activities are the foundation of our group. Welcome. I welcome you, and I welcome your writing. All of your writing, not just the parts you think are worth welcoming. I use Natalie Goldberg’s method of writing …
Protect Your Reader’s Trust with Good Mechanics
Everyone is always telling you that you need good mechanics, so why am I wasting your time talking about it too? Well, if you already study regularly and frequently in your never-ending and joyful quest to master grammar, punctuation, and word usage, then please skip this article. But if your motivation or practice falls below …
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Colorless Green Ideas Crashed My Car
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Your Right to Say Things that Don’t Make Sense
Syntax gives us the power to say things that don’t make sense: Ideas can’t have color (or crash a car), and something colorless can’t also be green, but I can say “colorless green ideas crashed my car,” and you can understand me, even if you’re quite not sure what I mean. The structure of a …
“I want these but don’t know how.”
What do you do with the pieces you don’t yet have the skill to finish? I used to leave them around in notebooks and never finish them. Half-abandoned, half-forgotten, they were a source of nebulous anxiety, though I vaguely planned to get back to them someday. Sometimes I’d remember one and think, “Hey, I know what …
Character Names from Movie Credits
When I write a first draft, I grab character names off the nearest shelf in my brain. I’ll bet at least 50% of my characters started off named “Carla” or “Carlos.” I try to find a more fitting name in the second or third draft, but usually I don’t get much more adventurous than “Edna” …
Get Great Titles from Shakespeare, Yeats, and Paul Simon
Here’s a fun way to get titles. You can use this method to title a piece you’ve already written, or you can use the titles as prompts and re-title later if you write something that doesn’t fit. Titles from Poems: The Method Find the text of a song or poem you like. Prose doesn’t usually …
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