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Posts from the ‘Craft’ Category

Aug 14

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Do you need to be a great grammarian to be a great writer?

I have to admit I am not the perfect grammarian. When I write, I often “wing” such things as commas and semi-colons. Later, when I go back over my work, I often chuckle at the silly and unlikely places I’ve stashed a comma.

Granted, as writers, we need to have a good understanding of our language but I don’t think we need to obsess over it. That’s what editors are for, right?

I love what author Joan Didion has to say about grammar: Read more

Aug 12

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How to ground readers in a scene using killer details

The more I write scenes, the more aware of my surroundings I become. In “The Scene Book: A Primer for the Fiction Writer,” Sandra Scofield says that, “the incidental movements and activities of characters help to define them, and the things they surround themselves with and use are part of who they are….What they do in response to events can be external signs of what they are feeling.”

We don’t want to interrupt the flow of a scene or dialogue by filling the scene with unnecessary detail but we do want enough detail to have our characters feel grounded in space and time and, if possible, we want to use details that can show who the characters are. Read more

Jul 31

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Write what you don’t know and what you do

You’ve heard the writing adage, “write what you know.” Writing about what you know has a benefit of giving your writing a sense of authority — the level of detail and accuracy that makes readers feel confident and immersed in the story or ideas.

But I especially like to write about what I don’t know. For one thing, I’m a learning junkie, so I get to feed my curiosity while I write. And when it comes to some forms of writing, we don’t know what we know until we engage in writing, which is an act of discovery.

Think about how you can blend what you know with what you don’t know.

Think of your experiences and knowledge as an element or starting point. A place you know well might be your setting, but everything that happens could be brand new. Use what you know, the details and images, as a way to free your imagination. Then trust your creative powers to invent something new.

Here are two advantages to embracing the unknown: You’ll widen your writing possibilities. You aren’t limiting yourself. Think of yourself as a writing explorer. You’ll bring a fresh perspective. You might see something in an original, creative way that reveals a new spin, plot twist, or original idea.

Jul 30

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Write dialogue cues like a bestselling author

At the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Conference this weekend, I took a series of phenomenal classes from writing teacher and psychologist Margie Lawson. I thought I was a fairly decent writer—I have a few awards to prove it—but what I learned this weekend after taking Lawson’s classes is that “I don’t know nothing yet.”

Let’s just say that by the end of the day I literally had one brain cell left.

One of my favorite classes was on dialogue cues. For the most part, I’ve already learned to keep my dialogue tags short. He said. She said. And to avoid attributions like the following:

  • “I don’t like you,” he said, disdainfully
  • “I hate you,” she said, angrily
  • “Don’t move,” he growled
  • “Get away from me,” she hissed Read more

Jul 29

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How to use a timeline to build emotion and meaning into your memoir or novel

While writing my memoir, I found that a timeline of key events in my characters’ lives helped me excavate memories and find context. I recently added another element to my timeline that has helped me advance the emotional beats of the story as I revise. And it works for fiction as well as memoir.

Because writers must go beyond the events of a story or life to include the meaning behind the memories, I realized that a key part of a timeline could include notes about the significance, emotion, and outcomes of character milestones.

As part of my timeline, I list ages and family milestones: births, deaths, major illnesses, turning points, and historical events. The new addition of emotion and meaning behind those events helped me find more opportunities to add conflict and resolution to my scenes. Read more

Jul 25

Revise your poem with this writing checklist

So many facets of writing craft go into making a poem or story flow and resonate with readers. The complexity of fitting all the pieces together into a meaningful whole is exactly what I love about the challenge of writing and revising.

I’m creating a list (a work in progress) to remind me of what I want to think about when I write and revise my poetry. Maybe these points will help you in your writing or if you’re called on to critique a friend’s poetry.

  1. Does the title help advance the poem’s story?
  2. Is the first line compelling?
  3. Does the first line reveal what I want the reader to know? Does it ground them in the meaning of the poem, hint at what’s to come? Read more

Jul 24

How a great “voice” can make an opening line

In Joe Fassler’s recent interview with Stephen King in “The Atlantic” we learn what the bestselling author thinks a first line in a novel should accomplish. Besides establishing time and space, and hooking the reader with compelling action, an opening line should, most importantly, establish voice.

We’ve heard the term “voice” before but what is it exactly? King describes it as follows:

“A novel’s voice is something like a singer’s — think of singers like Mick Jagger and Bob Dylan, who have no musical training but are instantly recognizable. When people pick up a Rolling Stones record, it’s because they want access to that distinctive quality. They know that voice, they love that voice, and something in them connects profoundly with it. Well, it’s the same way with books. Anyone who’s read a lot of John Sanford, for example, knows that wry, sarcastic amusing voice that’s his and his alone. Or Elmore Leonard — my god, his writing is like a fingerprint. You’d recognize him anywhere. An appealing voice achieves an intimate connection — a bond much stronger than the kind forged, intellectually, through crafted writing.” Read more

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