This article is a companion to “Watch Me Edit Prose” Original: Penny’s eyes flashed from Jamie’s scarlet dagger, to his face, then, with an effort of will, to his chest, watching for movement. The dagger had not been scarlet a
Writing a story down is hard, but it’s only half the battle. After drafting comes editing, which is a whole skill on its own. I can’t tell you everything I know about editing, let alone all that could be known.
Over Christmas break, devoid of either college or work, I did what I had long forsworn, in part from self-perservation, to do: I wrote a piece of fanfiction. Now, it’s not the only fanfiction I’ve written (this poem is based
Poetry is well known for its rhythm and its meter, particularly by those who know that not all poetry relies on such. Many an English speaker has fond or at least present memories of childhood rhymes like Mother Goose, traditional
Part of cultivating your literary skills is reading different genres, if only as a trial, and lately I’ve been getting into the pulps. A short story of Ray Bradbury’s (creepy), some Solomon Kane and Conan the Barbarian (interesting), and now
Description is a fundamental part of the art of writing. Characters, items, landscapes, sounds, smells, emotions, actions, they all need to be described for the reader to apprehend their existence. Each one has its own set of possible characteristics. Each
Efficiency. It means that every word that isn’t doing something good is doing something bad. Every sentence that doesn’t need to be there is a sentence that shouldn’t be there. Every paragraph that could be safely skipped is a paragraph
Have you ever gone back to read your old work, the stories you wrote way back when? I have. Let me tell you, that stuff is terrible reading. Oh, I still like some of the core ideas, some of the