Writer and instructor Matthew Salesses said, “The best ‘advice’ I’ve ever heard on revision was from the wonderful teacher and writer Margot Livesey. It was something like this: if you are bored, it’s not because you’ve read that section so many times, it’s because it’s boring.” Welp. I suppose it’s best to leave our delusions…
If you want to snag the attention of an agent, your book’s concept needs to be irresistible. But what’s going to buoy your book up above the other great concepts in the submission pile is the quality of your writing. And I don’t just mean polished writing. I mean writing that is unique and captivating….
If you’ve never hired an editor to help you with a creative writing project, there’s a good chance you don’t even know what types of editing are available to you. If you Google “types of editing”, you’re going to get hit with information like “Developmental Editing. (Also called: conceptual editing or manuscript appraisal)” and “Evaluation…
I learned of the term “weasel words” from writer Matt Bell, who thinks he learned it from Gabe Durham. In any event, it’s becoming part of the writing lexicon and what it means, in the creative writing sense, is different than the dictionary.com definition—“words or statements that are intentionally ambiguous or misleading.” Although the words…
The ability to describe is the key to great storytelling, but when it comes to depicting characters, our first impulse is often to go straight to the basics (height, hair color, clothing) and leave it at that. It’s not that those descriptions are bad, it’s just that they provide surface-level characterization rather than truly characterizing….