Monday Motivation: Beauty is clarity, clarity beauty
One of the aspects of writing – and of teaching creative writing – that continually perplexes and frustrates me, is the difficulty, indeed the apparent impossibility, of teaching writers to […]
Monday Motivation: How to squeeze suspense from your story
Suspense, in fiction, is created when we pose questions and then delay giving the answers. The reader, eager to find out those answers, will read on. But how about life? […]
Writing Secrets: What makes a verb strong?
I am constantly exhorting writers to avoid adverbs, but to use instead “strong verbs”. And they respond by saying, “Okay, but what is a strong verb, and how do we […]
Monday Motivation: Putting your finger on the very precise emotion
I’ve sometimes stressed how important it is, in creating the world of story, to use accurate details. Accuracy is really important because it lends credibility even to situations that are, […]
Monday Motivation: You can’t write well if you don’t do this simple, difficult thing
Are there secrets to good writing? You know all the platitudes as well as I do, the ones that insist that it’s mostly a matter of sweat, and very little […]
Writing Secrets: Choose a character you can embody
“I’m just so happy,” one of our mentoring participants told us recently. “I can’t tell you how happy I am. The writing’s flowing and … it just feels right.” We […]
Writing Secrets: Endings should never whimper
“The last paragraph, in which you tell what the story is about, is almost always best left out.” This was Irwin Shaw’s advice to young writers, and I think of […]
Writing Secrets: Beware the narrator who knows too much
I tend to advise new writers against using the god-like omniscient point of view when they start writing. Using a distant narrator who comments on all the characters, and can […]
Writing Secrets: Every little sentence is sacred
When you become a writer, every sentence should be sacred to you. I give this advice a great deal in our mentoring programme. Pay attention to each word you use: […]
Writing Secrets: No need for a war or a car chase on every page
So you’re writing the first pages of your novel and want to set up the fact that Linda is as happy as she could ever hope to be with her […]
Monday Motivation: Good writers say it simply
It’s an old story oft told but one worth telling and retelling: simple is best, clear is most beautiful. It’s true that writing requires artifice and contrivance. Threaded through even […]
Writing Secrets: Writing takes thought – so look beyond the obvious
Let’s look beyond the obvious in the old tenets of writing advice. We all know that “showing” is supposed to be better than “telling”. We know, for instance, that we […]
