If not, at least the rest of us will get a good laugh out of it! I don’t have to tell you the importance of good dialogue. People quote memorable lines from all sorts of works, all the time. They’re assimilated into our culture, and live on well after the writer him- or herself. You know what else we quote, though? Memorably bad lines. So let’s make sure your dialogue stays in the “good” category, shall we? Lots of things…
Ah, the unearthly blue lakes of the Swiss Alps. What a great setting to include in your story! Problem is, how do you describe it in words and achieve the same breathtaking effect? Trick question. You shouldn’t be describing anything. Your point-of-view character, or your narrator, communicates with the reader. The first step toward good imagery is describing the scene the way s/he would describe it. This is invaluable early in the story for establishing the world and revealing insight…
(Image credit: Leadershipcriteria Clipart) Character descriptions are one area where there’s no agreement on a single best approach. Everyone has different desires and expectations. Some writers paint vivid, exacting pictures of each character, down to eye and hair color. Some readers love this, and have trouble “seeing” the characters in their minds without those details. My approach, as a writer and reader, is the opposite. I prefer to describe only what’s vital to understanding the characters and plot. When I…
The most exposition any film ever needs- but this film was so well crafted that even if this crawl had been left out, you could’ve easily followed the plot. Think of your favorite movie. Play out the opening scene in your head. You can see it now: there’s the protagonist, crossing the room to sit down on a chair in the center of the set. She/He faces you, then spends the next forty minutes explaining who s/he is, what her/his…
(Photo credit: David Niblack, Imagebase.net. Half-assed creepy filtering by me!) My stomach knots up. My chest constricts. I’m stuck in a permanent cringe of humiliation, and can’t bear to be in the same room. I seek distraction from a book or video game, but the horrid, I-could-just-die anxiety doesn’t go away until it’s over. Am I on deck to give a big speech? Standing trial? No. My spouse is reading part of my manuscript for critique. It’s ridiculous. The whole…
(Now witness the full spectrum of Ellis’ Editing Pens of DOOM!) I don’t know where my 24×7, hyper-critical inner editor came from, but I have some theories. I’m super self-critical with everything I do, for one. For another, I like spelling and grammar. Although I chose an academic path rife with proofs, derivatives, and computer programs, I always scored higher on verbal aptitude tests than math or science ones. Also, I grew up in a house where one parent wasn’t…
(Photo credit: David Niblack, Imagebase.net) In my last post, I described ways I’ve freed up time for myself to write. Great- I should be churning out novels by the hundred! Well, no. Two years later, I finished a handful of short stories, and kept treading water on my novel manuscript. Something still wasn’t clicking. Then, I joined a writer’s group for a few months, looking for feedback on said manuscript. While attending those meetings, I finished and brought in a…
For most of the time I’ve dabbled in writing, I truly was dabbling. It was a hobby I ran with when I had time and inclination, and let slide when I didn’t. Things got done when they got done, if they got done at all (I have a huge folder of things that petered out in 80 pages or fewer). And that was OK, for a while. Then I decided I wanted to get more serious- buckle down and actually…