Good writing tip

fruit loop

fruit loop

Inactive
Avoiding passive voice

http://www.penwomanship.com/Active-vs-Passive-Moore.htm

This absolutely KILLS a good story. Some stories on here are very good, but are phrased "I was asleep....I was doing that..." THen they try to put the reader into the action. Doesn't work.

That is someone describing what they were doing after the fact. Put them in the action instead.

The spatter of bullets jolted John from sweet dreams of Melanie.....

Sounds more active than "John was asleep, dreaming of Melanie, when the gunshots woke him up." Doesn't it?

Also, you're telling a story, but don't make it SOUND like you're telling one. You want the reader to feel like he's in the room with the characters.

"You killed him." Melanie knew he had.

Already suspicious, Melanie glared at him accusingly. "You killed him."


Also, use spell and grammar check. I cannot stress this enough. Many a good story has been rejected by an editor because of poor grammar or spelling. Apostrophes are a pet peeve of editors (and me too) Wrong: The top grossing movie of the 1990's.

Correct: The top grossing movie of the 1990s.

Wrong: The dog licked it's fur.
Correct: The dog licked its fur.

Wrong: I bought new car's for my family.
Correct: I bought new cars for my family.

Wrong: They are our hero's. (this is a spelling AND punctuation error)
Correct: They are our heroes.

Keep writing.
 
B

big_sarge

Membership Revoked
My two cents

I teach journalism and I say....

It's all about verbs....verbs are a writer's paint. They are the words that paint the picture and describe the action.

The fullback ran down the field.

The fullback charged down the field.

The fullback lumbered down the field.

The fullback danced? down the field.

To me you get a slightly different image with each...and some actually don't work. So when you write also grab a good Thesarus and have fun.
 
Laurane

Laurane

Canadian Loonie
My favorite word when I was 10.....

was "dilapidated".....every thing I wrote contained a dilapidated house, car, cabin etc......don't get in a rut and use the same unusual words over and over. I always pick out duplication of phrases in novels.....some authors think it sounds interesting, but the same phrase doesn't always apply to different characters, though an author describes them the same way.

Am not a writer and am fairly pedantic with my words, but do recognise something which flows easily and well.....and is a joy to read.
 
fruit loop

fruit loop

Inactive
Dilapidated...

...that's a good word that sounds weird when you're stoned.

Buy a good thesaurus and a copy of The Synonym Finder. Can't live without mine

Verbs ARE great, but you have to be careful about purple prose. Lavender is bad. very, very bad
 
Christian for Israel

Christian for Israel

Knight of Jerusalem
from those of us new to writing (or at least from me :lol:), thank you all! your comments and pet peeves are appreciated. now, if i could ask you to comment on my story specifically, in the thread set up for that, as you read it, i'd appreciate it. comments about my writing with examples from the text are a great help.

thank you.
 
W

Warren Bone

Membership Revoked
"It was a hot and smelly day"...no, no...."It was a hot and humid day"...

"The day was hotter and humider than anything"....nope, still not what I'm after...

"It was a warm, muggy and yucky..."

"IT WAS A SULTRY DAY"...! Yeah, that's it! SULTRY.

:D

Remember the movie "Throw mama from the train" ?

HA!

It's all in the words. (I, too, started college majoring in journalism, and learned that babies don't bounce, so don't ever say "it was a bouncing baby boy!")

warren.
 
fruit loop

fruit loop

Inactive
How about

Instead of "it was a sultry day"

Melanie gasped, wishing sultry summer night allowed for a real deep breath....or maybe not. Rotting garbage, ripened nicely by the humid season, added too much pungent perfume to the evening for her taste.

Sweat sheened her face as she cat-footed through the dark alley......
 
Jmurman

Jmurman

Veteran Member
I am definately guilty of improper wording and incorrect puntctuation. Writing and posting my current story on line here has given me a lot of practice and I can honestly say that I feel I have improved in my story telling/communicating.

I wish we had editorial control over our stories, as we are not able to edit past a certain time frame. I find that very irritating as I cannot correct errors, or make any type of adjustments without a moderator.
 
fruit loop

fruit loop

Inactive
Practice is the key

You should see some of my early efforts at literary fame.....oh my goodness.... :lol:

Don't worry about editing your story online. Everyone is enjoying it.

Furthermore, remember: IT WILL NEVER BE PERFECT. Published authors often complain about reading their published works, even the bestselling ones, and cringing at stuff in them.

Writers are their own worst critics.

There also comes a time when you have simply looked at it too much.

Get a critique partner, and have them go over your work too. (REMEMBER THAT YOUR WORK IS SUBJECTIVE). Sometimes they'll have good suggestions, sometimes they won't in terms of the story, but they'll surely catch typos, grammar errors, etc.

Remember also that every writer has a unique style...give ten people the same story concept and they'll all word it differently.

You'll have a unique voice as a writer. Keep developing it, but don't pick it apart too much either.
 
A.T.Hagan

A.T.Hagan

Inactive
Not that I've actually sold the first word of fiction but having written the equivalent of a couple of novels I can tell you that I absolutely do not worry about spelling and grammar as I'm getting the story down into text. I can clean all that up later but getting the idea down in its first flush of creation is vital. Getting hung up on the mechanics risks losing the germ of the idea so that you end up with nothing.

Get the idea into words first just as fast as your mind and fingers will allow. Then clean it up, correct any mistakes, and so on.

The nature of the process in this forum being what it is the readers are often seeing what amounts to the original rough draft. Authors writing exclusively for the paying market would never publicly expose rough work like that, but would write it out then polish and polish and polish so they could present a finished (hopefully) work to whomever it is they are trying sell their story to.

Most of my story posts here were posted less than a day after I wrote them, often enough within a few hours. There have been ever so many that I've gone back to later to find spelling errors, grammar weaknesses, bad word choices, plot holes and so on. If it hasn't yet been 1440 minutes since I posted a given section I'll go back and clean that up, but many times I don't catch the error until the board's post edit time limit has expired. It has to be something pretty major for me to try to get one of the admins to change something for me.

Now that Tom and I are specifically modding this forum getting your story posts changed will be somewhat easier so if you find a gaffe you really want to have changed them PM me with the text you want to replace it with and I'll make the change for you. I'd prefer if you'd send me simple blocks of text to plug in rather than making individual changes.

Bottom line though is get the story down first. Then go back and polish it at your leisure. The world abounds in people who have good grasps of spelling and grammar, but someone who can tell a compelling story will always be in short supply.

.....Alan.
 
Jmurman

Jmurman

Veteran Member
RiJoRi said:
Just wondering--
Does any author here outline the story first? (Or even second or third?)

--Rich
Click to expand...

I do, however, the characters themselves can move the story along in areas that were'nt planned on. So, I just go with the flow and try to keep on track with the overall story line.

The Troublemaker is a good example in that there are characters and situations that I didn't envision beforehand.

It's cool when your story takes a life of it's own, at least from the author's point of view.
 
fruit loop

fruit loop

Inactive
I hate "method" writing

I know lots of writers who do outlines, plot on notecards....one woman does a collage on a bulletin board...there's even a software program that lets you outline characters and plot.

The very thought of this gives me hives.

I just sit down and write. If I hit a block, I write ahead. The nice thing about word processors is that you can do this.....I remember writing on a typewriter as a teen and hating that I had to write chapters one through seven before I could finally lay out the exciting scene that was already in my head.

With Word, you can just go ahead or behind and then fill in the blanks. I do this a lot....sometimes I even decide a particular scene or line of dialogue would fit better someone else, and I do cut and paste.

Here's where Fruit Loop's career gets weird......I get all my best ideas either from dreams or in the shower.

Yeah, the shower. I've been under the faucet with my eyes shut, scrubbing shampoo through my hair....and suddenly gotten a brilliant idea. My characters take on a life of their own. They climb into the shower with me and tell me what's going to happen next. (this is cool if it's the hero - yuck if it's the villain).

My characters don't cooperate. They barge in and tell me they want bigger parts. The one in my WIP was supposed to die in the last book. I even wrote her funeral, then she showed up and said, "hey, what are you trying to do to me?" Minor characters turn out to be really important.

So be warned: you are creating real worlds here. Be prepared to deal with the consequences
 
O

ofuzzy1

Just Visiting
Carefully posed prose will pose an image in the reader's mind.

I'm working on an addition to The Awakening, I'm sending it off to be proof read.
 
S

sbelew

Contributing Member
Didn't see this mentioned - and it's the rule I love to break.

ADVERBS KILL!!! If it ends in -ly, it should die (in MOST cases).

Suddenly, he leapt into motion. Bleah.

He loved her passionately. Vomit.

John ran quickly across the room and swiftly locked the door.


You get the point.

It's a tough rule though - those damn adverbs spring up like dandelions. Really! :P
 
S

sbelew

Contributing Member
The rule in action

Here's living proof of Froot Loops rule:

This is the rather clunky opening to the story I just posted:

"The screams of the children echoed down the white painted cinderblock hall. They were stampeding to the exits, arms trailing behind them as they ran. The final bell of the final day of the school year rang loud and long. Outside, they were throwing papers in the air as they boarded the buses.

Mary Goldman crossed her arms and leaned on the door to her classroom, a wry smile blooming on her face. Another year done. This had been her third year at Carson Elementary, and it had been better than the previous two. Her most vivid memories of her first year were of Billy Meery. Demon spawn Billy Meery. He’d made that year misery. She’d almost quit teaching because of him.

Her second year had been easier, but no picnic. The Mulder twins had been hell on wheels, but they were good boys at heart. Still, they’d exhausted her at times.

This year had been different. Her kids (and she did consider them her kids) had been energetic but well behaved, and eager to learn. She’d found herself wishing she could keep them."


Now, with some revision:

"The children screamed as they ran down the white painted cinderblock halls. They stampeded to the exits, arms trailing behind them as they ran. The final bell of the final day of the school year rang loud and long. Outside, they threw papers in the air as they boarded the buses.

Mary Goldman crossed her arms and leaned on the door to her classroom, a wry smile blooming on her face. Another year done. This was her third year at Carson Elementary, and it had been the best yet. Her most vivid memories of her first year involved Billy Meery. Demon spawn Billy Meery. He’d made that year misery. She’d almost quit teaching because of him.

Her second year was easier than the first, but still no picnic. The Mulder twins had been hell on wheels, but they were good boys at heart. Still, they’d exhausted her at times.

This year was different. Her kids (and she did consider them her kids) were energetic but well behaved, and eager to learn. She found herself wishing she could keep them."


It ain't Hemingway, but it's better than it was :P
 
Indiansummer

Indiansummer

Inactive
About apostrophes, if the word is plural no apostrophy, if the word is followed by is, as in it is, it's. Also denotes possesive, such as when you want to say the check belonged to Sally, Sally's check had not made it through the local post office. Just thought it might help to have a reference, to help determine when an apostrophy is appropriate. I'm rusty on the old grammar rules myself, but this is one I remember, and still use.
 
fruit loop

fruit loop

Inactive
Some more

"It's" is a contraction, NOT a possessive. It denotes "it is."

It's a boy! (correct: it is a boy)
The dog licked it's fur. (Wrong, the dog did not lick it is fur.)

1990's hottest fashion craze. (correct, it happened in 1990)
The hottest fashion craze of the 1990's (wrong - it refers to the decade, which is plural in this case, not possessive)

Great Buys (correct)
Great Buy's (wrong - and I saw this in a store!)

Comb Sally's hair (correct - the hair belongs to Sally)
Sally combed each of her hair's (wrong - the hair doesn't belong to itself)

Watch out for homonyms, too, such as hole and whole.

-ing words aren't always bad. If the alternative is to use -ing words rather than a million "ANDs" I'd rather see the ing words.

has been, was, were are passive tense. Kills action. Don't use them if you can avoid it.
 
Indiansummer

Indiansummer

Inactive
fruit loop said:
"It's" is a contraction, NOT a possessive. It denotes "it is."

It's a boy! (correct: it is a boy)
The dog licked it's fur. (Wrong, the dog did not lick it is fur.)

1990's hottest fashion craze. (correct, it happened in 1990)
The hottest fashion craze of the 1990's (wrong - it refers to the decade, which is plural in this case, not possessive)

Great Buys (correct)
Great Buy's (wrong - and I saw this in a store!)

Comb Sally's hair (correct - the hair belongs to Sally)
Sally combed each of her hair's (wrong - the hair doesn't belong to itself)

Watch out for homonyms, too, such as hole and whole.

-ing words aren't always bad. If the alternative is to use -ing words rather than a million "ANDs" I'd rather see the ing words.

has been, was, were are passive tense. Kills action. Don't use them if you can avoid it.
Click to expand...

I didn't mean that "it's" is a possesive, I was talking about Sally's check. Perhaps, I was not clear enough.
 
fruit loop

fruit loop

Inactive
I wasn't addressing your post at all

Just commenting on the proliferation of incorrect apostrophe use in today's society. One of my pet peeves.
 
A.T.Hagan

A.T.Hagan

Inactive
If you write on at least a semi-regular basis and want to get an idea of how far you've come try editing a work that you wrote several years earlier.

By the time I'm done I think I'll have cut well over a thousand words. Most of them will be "and said", "just", and "and."

.....Alan.
 
M

Marine

Inactive
this is a great thread.

It is amazing how the story takes a life of its own.

Characters seem to define themselves and take on their own life.

Grammar definitely is a problem, some of the time. homonyms do cause problems, they are easy to get confused.


I have one huge story I am working on right now and the one posted here. The big one is really kicking my butt. Like FL said, thank God for Word. I have written the ending scenarios for several characters and a few action sequences that happen at later parts than what I have written so far. I have also gone back and re-edited all the chapters several times. After a while you can't see mistakes anymore.

as for outlines, I generally don't use them but a few times they have helped me get past a block and they are good for brainstorming ideas on where to take the story.

Saga of Jake I started with the line "Damn it was cold." and went from there. That was all the inspiration I had for that story. At Chapter 5 or 6 or so I got hung up bad and couldn't think of where to go, so I sat down and brainstormed ideas in the form of an outline. 5 pages later I got to the end of the book. I started writing again and totally left the outline all together, but it got me moving. So I think outlines have some use.
 
O

ofuzzy1

Just Visiting
Marine:

Rule to chapter lenghts?

None, just keep posting :lkick:

A chapter length should be less than 60000 words :lkick:

Seriously, a chapter should be a discreet unit of time you select based on your story. If the whole thing get wrapped up in a day then use an hour or two per chapter. A week or fortnight work good for Allan and Tom's stories.
 
M

Marine

Inactive
I'm working on it, real life and all that....


On my big project, the chapters are 12 -14 pages each in word. I'll probably be making them longer once I start editing. I have 14 chapters done so far and only a bout a quarter of the way through the first book.

Kinda of a dumb question, but I was thinking of bigger and fewer vs smaller and more chapters...
 
F

FireDance

TB Fanatic
Marine said:
I'm working on it, real life and all that....


On my big project, the chapters are 12 -14 pages each in word. I'll probably be making them longer once I start editing. I have 14 chapters done so far and only a bout a quarter of the way through the first book.

Kinda of a dumb question, but I was thinking of bigger and fewer vs smaller and more chapters...
Click to expand...


I think it depends on the book Marine. FL is right, end at an exciting point to pull the reader forward. Sometimes even that rule should be broken. I've read books that have had short chapters and "worked" and then long that have not worked and all sorts in between. I think at this point I wouldn't even worry about chapter length if I were you. Just write. All will become clear on the zillionth edit. I'm sure there's some rule out there, but sometimes the best stuff doesn't follow the rules.

If a book is working and it has small chapters the only problem I seem to have is that it seems like I'm eating the book and it's going too fast. And that my friend, is a personal problem!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top