Every rider, roper, athlete, or stunt double will tell you: before you can do the special tricks, you have to master the basics, or you’re likely to get hurt. So here’s a VERY basic writing question: What’s a sentence? Answer you learned in 3rd grade: A sentence has a noun (specifically a subject) and a […]
Writing Lesson 3.32 – Finding Your Voice
May 4, 2012 By 2 Comments
You know that game where a friend sneaks up behind you, covers your eyes, and says, “Guess who?” By the time they speak, the game is pointless because you know the sound of your friend’s voice. Everyone has a characteristic voice. This is as true when we write as it is when we speak or […]
Writing Lesson 3.30 – THAT Doesn’t Matter
April 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment
When it comes to prose, some things matter. THAT often doesn’t. For the past couple months I’ve been working on story rewrites. Thanks to a terrific editor, my novel The Black Rose should be all cleaned up and ready for release from Desert Breeze Publishing in July. It’s amazing no matter how many times I […]
Writing Lesson 3.25 – Your First Hundred Words
March 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment
I recently read about a contest where writers could send a portion of their work to an agent. One person would receive a request for the full manuscript. Nice offer! The rules allowed each writer to send the first 100 words of their book. Yes, you read that right. One hundred words, plus or minus […]
Writing Lesson 3.22_Verbs That Leap, Love, or . . . Lose
February 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Verbs, verbs, verbs. Get used to it, because now that you’re a writer, you’ll hear about them often and be told again and again to make them stronger. What in the world is a stronger verb anyway? It’s one that leaps into a reader’s visualization of a scene. It shows love or pain in such […]
