Alexis Grant, a journalist working on a travel memoir on the side, has a good list on why a writer should keep a day job.
Category Archives: Writing
On suspense
The May/June issue of Writer’s Digest Magazine includes an article on “How To Build Suspense With Backstory,” by Romance writer Leigh Michaels. I liked this bit:
The suspense we’re discussing here doesn’t necessarily involve the characters being in peril; it’s created whenever there’s something the reader wants to know. Will Joe kiss Brenda? Will Sally give in to Brad’s demand that she work for him? Will Jared answer Katherine’s question or dodge it?
Whenever you cause readers to be curious about what comes next, you’re creating suspense. Suspense rises naturally from good writing—it’s not a spice to be added separately.
Literature vs. Trash
“Literature is the right use of language irrespective of the subject or reason of the utterance. A political speech may be, and sometimes is, literature; a sonnet to the moon may be, and often is, trash. Style is what distinguishes literature from trash,” writes Evelyn Waugh, and he backs it up too. This link is particularly relevant to our blog because I posted a G.M.Hopkins poem to the moon earlier this week.
An Unusual or Sophisticated Way of Looking at the World
Joseph Epstein reviews a writing book and spends most of his time describing the points raised in another book.
After thirty years of teaching a university course in something called advanced prose style, my accumulated wisdom on the subject, inspissated into a single thought, is that writing cannot be taught, though it can be learned—and that, friends, is the sound of one hand clapping. A. J. Liebling offers a complementary view, more concise and stripped of paradox, which runs: “The only way to write is well, and how you do it is your own damn business.”
…
In its subtlest sense style is a way of looking at the world, and an unusual or sophisticated way of doing so is not generally acquired early in life. This why good writers rarely arrive with the precocity of visual artists or musical composers or performers. Time is required to attain a point of view of sufficient depth to result in true style.
(via Books, Inq)
Words: playing with magic
Roy Jacobsen, over at Writing, Clear and Simple, posts an interesting short video on “The Power Of Words.” (Click on the link to see it; I’ll throw him the traffic rather than embed it here.)
“The power of words” is a subject that intrigues me; I don’t have a fully developed philosophy of it. As a writer I know from experience that finding the right words makes a huge difference. I feel (though I wouldn’t be dogmatic on it) that there’s a mystical power in some words. As I understand it, in Old Testament Hebrew there’s no essential difference between a thing and its name. To name a thing gave you a certain power over it (thus Adam’s naming of the beasts made him lord over them all). God’s essential name, Y*H*W*H, is never to be spoken, in part because He cannot be mastered.
This sounds terribly primitive and superstitious to the modern mind, but is there not some echo of it in the Social Busybodies’ incessant campaign to change the names of things? We just get used to one “appropriate” word for people of African descent, or indigenous American tribes, or people with mental or physical problems, and the busybodies suddenly announce a name change. I assume they do this because the magic they hoped to conjure up through their magic words has failed to materialize. So they need to try a new incantation.
Blogging note: I’ll be out of town again tomorrow (personal, not Viking-related), so no post from me.
A Whole Bunch of Writing Tips
Steve Silberman is writing a book on “autism, the variety of human cognitive styles, and the rise of the neurodiversity movement.” He’s written articles in the past, but with the opportunity to put together 100k on a subject he is passionate about, he began to get nervous. He writes:
I’ve chosen to deal with my anxiety by tapping into the wisdom of the hive mind. I recently sent email to the authors in my social network and asked them, “What do you wish you’d known about the process of writing a book that you didn’t know before you did it?”
Several authors replied. Here’s one from Cory Doctorow that I wrestle with: “Write even when the world is chaotic. You don’t need a cigarette, silence, music, a comfortable chair, or inner peace to write. You just need ten minutes and a writing implement.” (via Books, Inq.)
Tips from Twitter
FakeAPStylebook on Twitter hands us words to write by:
- Typographers will tell you to eliminate widows and orphans. Typographers are MONSTERS.
- “Kill your darlings” refers to editing overwrought copy. Our apologies to the surviving family of Gotham City’s Printon “Scoop” Presser.
- To avoid being sued for copyright infringement, alter one letter in each word of quotes from literary works: “Carl mi Ishmail.”
- Misplaced modifiers are always in the last place you look.
Priceless and free. This comes from the brilliant minds behind Write More Good.
They Want To You Write
Here’s some optimistic encouragement to Londoners on writing plays. Write the way you speak is fair advice, but I think many creative writers believe they are writing that way when they aren’t. And what if you want a character to sound different than you? What you do then, eh?
(ED: The title for this post reflects my disturbed mindframe.)
The Secret to Writing in the Internet Age
Author Joseph Finder talks about what he does to keep distraction at bay. He’s got a new book coming too, so the YouTube page has a soft sell on that, but it’s not in this video.
Three Thoughts For Aspiring Writers Of Speculative Fiction
- “If there are more proper nouns in your back cover text blurb than non-proper ones, you’re probably doing something wrong.”
- “Unspeakable evil probably doesn’t live in your mom’s basement.”
- “If your star-spanning galactic empire doesn’t have working cell phone technology, you may want to rethink things a bit.”