Tag: authors
Literary Thinking
“Not a wasted word. This has been a main point to my literary thinking all my life.”
—Hunter S. Thompson
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Punctuation Is Your Friend . . .
[found on thepunctuationguide.com]
. . .
“An ellipsis is a set of three periods ( . . . ) indicating an omission. Each period should have a single space on either side, except when adjacent to a quotation mark, in which case there should be no space.”
—
“The em dash is perhaps the most versatile punctuation mark. Depending on the context, the em dash can take the place of commas, parentheses, or colons—in each case to slightly different effect.
Notwithstanding its versatility, the em dash is best limited to two appearances per sentence. Otherwise, confusion rather than clarity is likely to result.
Do not mistake the em dash (—) for the slightly narrower en dash (–) or the even narrower hyphen (-). Those marks serve different purposes and are further explained in other sections.”
!
“The most flagrant way a writer demonstrates contempt for his readers is by ignoring punctuation altogether. A close second is the abundant use of the exclamation point. Some writers even use three or more exclamation points, lest the reader not fully grasp the significance of what is being said. To be effective, the exclamation point should be used in moderation.”
[ found on http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/index.html ]
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Construction Ahead
Readers at Odds
“If you’re a voracious reader and you write something that you want to read, odds are other people will want to read it, too.”
— Tim Maleeny
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Born to Write
Paths Are Made
Just Keep Swimming…
Doubts or Hunger
“I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this.”
— Cormac McCarthy
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Grand Opening—Or Nothing At All
[found on hatrack.com; by Orson Scott Card]
“If you mess up the opening, nothing you do later in the story will fix it. And because mistakes in the opening will reverberate through the rest of the story, when you finally do fix the opening you usually have to throw out and redo everything that you wrote after it. With rare exceptions, you simply have to get the opening right before you can go on.
But what is the “opening”? The first sentence? Having a good first sentence is nice, but it’s not the opening. By definition, the first sentence is in the first paragraph, and the first paragraph is free. That is, the first paragraph of a story does not have to be in the same voice or mood or tone as the rest of the work. The first paragraph is important for setting the scene, for giving vital information that allows what follows to make sense. But the real opening is after that first paragraph — when the story starts in earnest.”
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