Show and Tell and Write: Writing Tools not Rules
Showing versus telling is not a matter of right and wrong. Once again, in writing, there are no rules, only tools.
Mind The Gap: How the Uncle Charles Principle and Its Adaptations Can Close the Gap Between Narrator and Reader in Different Narrative Points of View
As writers, we often desire to close the gap between our characters and readers. We want readers to become so engrossed in the characters’ lives that they forget they are reading. This gap between the reader and the text can widen when the author uses an indirect characterization method.…
“The Road to the Country” by Chigozie Obioma
TRIGGER WARNING: Graphic Violence
The Road to the Country by Chigozie Obioma is a brutal and honest look at war and genocide. Kunle, the novel’s protagonist, is defined by the guilt he feels over a childhood accident that left his younger brother paralyzed.…
Let’s Talk About First Lines with Faulkner
Recently, a statement in a BBC article by Hephzibah Anderson about the all-important first line of a novel caught my eye: “We frontload our expectations, insisting that a handful of words must contain the DNA of all that is to come, encapsulating the conflict of a 300-page story.”…
Consider an Author Website an Investment in You
You are a writer. You may not have published a long-form work, but you write and revise, you submit, you pitch. Maybe you are seeking a literary agent. Maybe you plan to self publish. Or maybe you just write and rewrite.…
First Annual Hundred Word Horror Contest!
Announcing our first annual Hundred Word Horror fiction contest. With a matching hundred dollar first prize.
“The Instrumentalist” by Harriet Constable
In 18th-century Venice, female babies of prostitutes are commonly drowned in the canals, but a lucky few are placed through a box in the wall of the Ospedale della Pietà. Inside, the girls are given music lessons from a young age, and those who excel can escape the fate of being married off to anyone who will have them.…
Word Choice: How Karen Russell’s “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” Can Save Writers from Becoming a “Bunches”
When my son, Nick, was in high school, his English teacher asked the class to write a brief essay about their summer vacations. Reading aloud, one of Nick’s friends ended his paper with, “I had a lot of fun.” His teacher asked the student if he could think of a better word or phrase to express “a lot.”…
Most Books on Writing Suck and Here’s Why
This article was originally going to be a review for a recent craft book I picked up to read that promised to look at writing through a new lens. However, midway through chapter three, I put the book down and didn’t pick it up again.…