Month: January 2014

Strong Words Where Stand Ye?

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[found on writershelper.com]

“Writing Tip #5: Use strong verbs and nouns

The verbs are the action words. They put things in motion. Make yours as strong as possible.

The verb to be (am, is, are, was, were) puddles on the floor. Eliminate it wherever possible. I spent a year in Ukraine and experienced Russian, where the verb to be exists, but almost never appears. People simply leave it out and I found the effect powerful. In English we can’t leave verbs out of our sentences, but we can make those we use work hard for us.

Nouns name the people, places, and things in our world. English has multiple words for almost everything. A male parent can be father, dad, pop, daddy, the old man, pater, progenitor, sire, begetter, conceiver, governor, abba, papa, pa, pap, pappy, pops, daddums, patriarch, paterfamilias, stepfather, foster father, and other family nicknames. Choose the noun that does the best work for you.

Short words are usually best. They have more punch. They hit the gut hard.

The paragraph above has only one word with more than one syllable.”

For more exciting tips on writing from Writer’s Helper, click here.

[found on http://www.writershelper.com/writingtips.html]

Authors on Authoring

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“Never open a book with weather. If it’s only to create atmosphere, and not a charac­ter’s reaction to the weather, you don’t want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead look­ing for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways than an Eskimo to describe ice and snow in his book Arctic Dreams, you can do all the weather reporting you want.”

—Elmore Leonard

“You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You’ve been backstage. You’ve seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a ­romantic relationship, unless you want to break up.”

—Margaret Atwood 

“Do it every day. Make a habit of putting your observations into words and gradually this will become instinct. This is the most important rule of all and, naturally, I don’t follow it.”

—Geoff Dyer

 

Which or That?

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[found on writetothepoint.com; by Gary Kinder]

“The difference between “that” and “which” might be the most confounding piece of grammar in the English language, but it doesn’t have to be. Here’s what you need to know: Grammarians call the words following a “that” or a “which” a “relative clause.” That relative clause either “restricts” (I like the word “distinguishes” better, but grammar texts have long called the word “that” “restrictive”) what it modifies, or it “does not restrict” what it modifies. The writer tells us which it is by the word he chooses to introduce the clause.

“That” at the beginning restricts; it means that the writer wants the relative clause to distinguish one thing from a universe of like things. “Which” at the beginning means the writer addresses only one thing, and he simply wants to add information.”

[found on http://writetothepoint.com]

Want a Great Book?

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[found on helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com; by K.M. Weiland]

“Twenty-five ways to write an awesome book:

1. Hook readers with a strong first chapter that doesn’t waste time.

2. Create a sympathetic and/or entertaining character.

3. Give the character a strong goal.

4. Obstruct the character’s goal with equally strong opposition.

5. Create a theme that arises from the character’s inner conflict.

6. Craft a strong plot with proper structure.

7. Do your research and get your facts straight.

8. Expunge unnecessary scenes, settings, and characters.

9. Balance action and character with properly structured scene/sequel pairings.

10. Write realistic, entertaining dialogue.

11. Maintain a consistent POV.

12. Create original and entertaining voices for narrating characters.

13. Tighten descriptions with more strong verbs and nouns and fewer modifiers.

14. Show more than you tell.

15. Dig deep for original ideas and turns of phrase.

16. Properly foreshadow your climax—without giving away any big reveals.

17. Build realistic and engaging settings.

18. Add only meaningful subplots.

19. When you build tension—always fulfill it.

20. Create a dynamic arc of growth for your character.

21. Add interesting minor characters who can power the plot forward.

22. Choose the right tone to enhance your plot and theme.

23. Rock readers with a climax that fulfills all their desires for the story.

24. Don’t tie off all the loose ends in your story’s ending.

25. Proofread, proofread, proofread.”

For more excellent tips from K.M. Weiland, click here.

[found on http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/2013/11/top-25-ways-write-awesome-book.html]

Killing Your Characters

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[found on writersrelief.com; by Writers Relief Staff]

“If you’re considering killing off your main character, keep the following tips in mind:

  1. Be somewhat realistic. It may be hard to swallow if your main character survives what no one should be able to. When a jumbo jet crashes in the desert but your hero, Jack, walks away unscathed thanks to his skill with a nail file and a soda can, you can practically hear your readers groan.
  2. Plot problems. Don’t kill the protagonist if you are having problems with the storyline and simply don’t know what to do next: The heroine finds herself between an enraged grizzly and a cliff—if you can’t figure out a plausible way to extricate her, this shouldn’t be the only reason to kill her off.
  3. Beware morality statements. Perhaps your main character’s death is a natural consequence of his fatal flaw. He is a functioning alcoholic and sometimes drinks and drives. Be very careful not to make this into a morality statement by waving it over your readers’ heads: This is what happens to drunk drivers! You want the story to be powerful, not your personal statement on drunk driving.
  4. Don’t kill the MC off in a trivial or anticlimactic way. In other words, unless it’s tied to the theme or plot in some significant way, Hattie Heroine should not die from an infected paper cut. If we’ve invested in her character, we need some tension building up to her death.
  5. Avoid resurrections. Please don’t be tempted to miraculously bring a main character back to life unless it’s an integral part of your plot or theme (like a medical thriller centered around a miraculous new drug that reverses death). What? It was actually Hattie Heroine’s twin sister who died of infection? Like an ending where the MC wakes up and realizes everything was just a dream, a miraculous resurrection can be a little cheesy—or an easy out.”
[found on http://writersrelief.com/blog/2013/11/main-characters-how-to-kill-your-protagonist-without-killing-your-fanbase]

Writer…Arrived

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“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.” 

― Ernest Hemingway