When I first started writing, my drafts would often read like this: Paragraph of description–> followed by paragraph of action–> more description–> block of dialog–> paragraph of backstory or exposition–> etc. As readers, we know instinctually that there is something wrong with this pattern. When we read our favorite books, […]
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I’ve been invited to participate in the Writing Process Blog Tour. This traveling tour occurs every Monday on multiple blogs and is an opportunity for writers to share a little about what, how, and why they write. Since I’m pretty much always blathering on about my writing process, participating in this blog hop was a no-brainer. […]
“What is dialog?” “Dialog is written speech.” “How do I write really good dialog?” “First, you have to understand that dialog is more than just people talking. When you write dialog like this, with no ‘tags,’ you run the risk of your scene turning into talking heads.” “Tags? Like, graffiti?” […]
What is action? Put in the simplest terms, action is merely the inclusion of verbs in your narrative. He charged. She swung her sword. Easily identifiable as actions. In a deeper sense, however, action is plot. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that plot is action. Or […]
Description is one of those concepts in writing that is easy to grasp, harder to execute. For me, the key to learning how to describe well was understanding just what the goal of description is. When I was starting out as a writer, my tendency was to either put in too many […]
One of the things that gets repeatedly drummed into a learning writer’s brain is “Show don’t Tell.” If you’ve taken a writing class, or read a book about writing, or even inhabited the same coffee shop with other writers, surely you’ve heard this adage. On the off chance that you […]