Over the holidays, I asked folks in my online network to share one-sentence writing tips. Here are four more.
Jackie Pelham – “Let the muse flow then wait a few days and edit.”
Dixon Rice – “Most of us can’t find our own mistakes; if there isn’t a local writing critique group, start your own.”
Gil Roscoe – "One must stand up to life before one sits down to write." (Thoreau)
Michael Snell – “Replace ‘Driving my car down the road, I threw a can out the window’ with ‘Driving my battered green 1997 Subaru down Route 6, I threw an empty Diet Mountain Dew can out the window.’ “
Dixon says: Michael provided a great example of using specific details to breathe life into a scene. Jackie and Gil got in touch with the soul of the writer. Me? All I could come up with was a crappy little nuts-n-bolts tip about getting out of the house in a way that doesn’t make your Significant Other suspicious. Sigh…
Tomorrow, more one-sentence writing tips from Mike Snyder, Linda Swink, Mark Terry, Claudette Walker and Kristen Wood.
You are your own worst critic. If you think you should edit your own work, get in line behind the WRITING FOR DUMMIES book. Yes editors do not want to do all the work and usually want you to know grammar, punctuation, and etc: but it is always good to let someone outside your own family or that has a outside opinion look at it. It is only advice, you do not have to change your manuscript-but please use it. And the more details about the story the better, but please do not go into details that have nothing to do with the story-I personally do not want to know every inch of a fake lamp that is beside a bed when the story is not about that bedroom or that lamp.
ReplyDelete