When I studied Spanish in high school, we had an assignment to write a recipe and present it in class. One of the recipes was for Homemade Ranch Salad Bandage – you know, that white stuff you put on a salad when it skins its knee. Yes, they actually meant salad dressing. But guess what. The …
Category Archives: Improve Your Craft
The Parable of the Salad Bandage,
Then
Will you try an experiment with me? Read this excerpt from a short story I’m working on: “A pleasure,” I said, and he must have heard me, for he bowed his head. Then he turned and walked down the stairs. Now compare: “A pleasure,” I said, and he must have heard me, for he bowed …
Do It More
When somebody tells you to take something out, sometimes the solution is to do it more. This often works in visual art: That area of purple in the upper right corner of your painting, the one that’s “ruining” the composition? Instead of removing it, put more purple in other parts of the painting. Suddenly it all comes together. I …
Playing Dress-Up
What Makes for an “AWESOME” Description? As a second-grader, I was told: Dress up your writing. In other words, I should be more descriptive. My teachers equated “descriptive” with adjectives and adverbs. They told me not to merely write, “Once upon a time, there was a princess who lived in a castle.” They advised me to embellish my …
Why Write to the End?
Often new members come to our writing group and ask for feedback on their as-yet-uncompleted novel. Or someone who’s been with us a while will get an idea for a story while at the group, write a few scenes of it during the writing sessions, and then ask everybody what we think. This seems perfectly …
Creating Your Own Style Guide and Editing List
In this post, I’m passing along some thoughts about tools that work for me and might help some of you too—creating your own style guide and editing list. Style Guide One of the most well-known style guides is the Chicago Manual of Style. You can use the book or the online version to look up …
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Script Frenzy: Coming Your Way in April
If you like to set big writing goals and then dive in, you might want to check out the Script Frenzy event that runs April 1-30. Script Frenzy is an annual event sponsored by the nonprofit organization the Office of Letters and Light to encourage creative writing. The goal is to write 100 pages of …
The Rules Disease
Writing Rules Anyone who seriously tackles the craft of writing is likely to have encountered a writing rule, like “Show, Don’t Tell,” or “Never Begin a Sentence with a Conjunction.” “Don’t Split Infinitives” and “Never Head Hop” are also popular. The granddaddy of all of them, “Omit Needless Words,” is deliciously self-explanatory … but the …