Hi, all! Ava Pennington here from not-so-sunny Florida. As I write this, it’s raining. At least my lawn and flowerbeds are happy. Is it raining where you are? I don’t mean the weather. Is it raining on your writing?
Category: Writing craft
This is our archive pageMaking Poems Different I
Hello, I’m Donn Taylor, here again to talk about poetry and ways to achieve the “higher voltage” that distinguishes poetry from most prose. In my last few posts, I spoke of several basic ways to organize a poem. Now we turn to several ways of making your poem different than many, perhaps most, that editors will see. The vast majority of new poems I’m seeing are written in the poet’s own voice, with the poet as the speaker (persona) of the poem and one or more aspects of the poet’s self as the subject. It’s safe to assume that editors…
Intimate Storytelling – Part IV
Welcome to the CAN blog. I hope you're having a wonderful summer, and I'm happy to be with you today to share the final part of Intimate Storytelling. The topic: Sentence and Thought Tags A simple method of improving your writing is learning how to use dialogue tags and presenting character’s thoughts. Though this may seem trivial, these techniques are important in helping you become an author who knows how to write. One way to approach this is to ask yourself how would a real person say this or do this. Then bring that to life by using the following techniques.
PUGS Pointers #10
Hi! I’m Kathy Ide. In addition to being a published author, I’m a full-time professional freelance editor. For CAN, I’m blogging about “PUGS”–Punctuation, Usage, Grammar, and Spelling…tips for writers based on the most common mistakes I see in the manuscripts I edit. Each blog post will have one tip for each of the four categories, as well as a reason it’s important for authors to “polish their PUGS.” (For more PUGS tips, check out my website, www.KathyIde.com, or get a copy of my book “Polishing the PUGS” (available through the website or at the conferences where I teach). If you’re interested in…
Finding and Writing a Character’s Voice: Lessons from Playwriting
Hello, again! Maureen Pratt here with my monthly blogpost about the craft of writing. Today, I'm going to focus on techniques to employ to find and write distinctive voices for each of your characters or individuals in fiction or non-fiction. I began my professional writing career as a playwright, earning my Master of Fine Arts in Theater Arts with a concentration in playwriting from UCLA and later having a number of plays produced. Unlike writing for the movies, playwriting "runs" on dialogue. A professional script for live theater contains very little, if any, description except to set the scene, and…
Poetry Basics: Organizing the Poem III
Hello. I'm Donn Taylor, here again to talk about poetry writing and ways to achieve the "higher voltage" that distinguishes poetry from most prose. We've talked about putting strong words in emphatic places, use of images, and a little bit about figurative language. On my last blog we began talking about ways to organize a poem. Those ways are infinite, of course, so we'll confine ourselves to some of the most common, and we'll deal only with lyric poetry (poetry that expresses the poet's thoughts or emotions). As before, I compare a short poem to a paragraph: it has a…
Friends and Experts
Hi, all! Ava Pennington checking in from sunny Florida. They say the life of a writer is lonely. That’s true in some ways, but the advent of the Internet has connected us in ways we never imagined. It has also made research easier than ever. However, easier is not always better. We’ve all heard the warnings about verifying the accuracy of our sources. Certain websites have more credibility than others. Just because something is on the Internet doesn’t make it true.
Intimate Storytelling – Part II Character’s Feelings
It's Friday and I know you're looking forward to the weekend. Most of us are, but a wirter often writes seven days a week with a few hours squeezed in for family, church, exercise and eating. But it's always nice to share some thoughts with you about wrting techniques that makes our books the best they can be. Hi from Gail Gaymer Martin www.gailmartin.com Part I covered some of the elements of staying in a POV character’s viewpoint, but intimate storytelling needs more than a character’s viewpoint. The reader needs to feel the story through the character’s impressions and experience….
PUGS Pointers #10
Hi! I’m Kathy Ide. In addition to being a published author, I’m a full-time professional freelance editor. For CAN, I’m blogging about “PUGS”–Punctuation, Usage, Grammar, and Spelling…tips for writers based on the most common mistakes I see in the manuscripts I edit. Each blog post will have one tip for each of the four categories, as well as a reason it’s important for authors to “polish their PUGS.” (For more PUGS tips, check out my website, www.KathyIde.com, or get a copy of my book “Polishing the PUGS” (available through the website or at the conferences where I teach). If you’re interested…
Poetry Basics: Organizing the Poem II
Hello. I'm Donn Taylor, here again to talk about poetry writing and ways to achieve the "higher voltage" that distinguishes poetry from most prose. We've talked about putting strong words in emphatic places, use of images, and a little bit about figurative language. On my last blog we began talking about ways to organize a poem. Those ways are infinite, of course, so we'll confine ourselves to some of the most common, and we'll deal only with lyric poetry (poetry that expresses the poet's thoughts or emotions). As before, I compare a short poem to a paragraph: it has…
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