World Wide Words single word requests - What is a less offensive synonym for "hypocrite"? - English Language and Usage - Stack Exchange Cliche Finder Have you been searching for just the right cliché to use? Are you searching for a cliché using the word "cat" or "day" but haven't been able to come up with one? Just enter any words in the form below, and this search engine will return any clichés which use that phrase... Over 3,300 clichés indexed! What exactly is a cliche? This is Morgan, creator of the Cliche Finder. Or, you might like my crazy passion project: Spanish for Nerds: Learning Spanish via Etymologies! Back to cliches... if you would like to see some other Web sites about clichés? © S. Special thanks to Damien LeriAnd to Mike Senter Morgan's Web page
Questionnaires for Writing Character Profiles - Creative Writing Help Enter your e-mail to get the e-book for FREE. We'll also keep you informed about interesting website news. "I have searched the web and used different worksheets, but none have come close to your worksheets and descriptions of (what to do and what not to do). Both courses I have taken have with Creative Writing Now have been amazing. Each time I have learned something new. "As usual - I already love the course on Irresistible Fiction, rewriting a lot and improving greatly even after the first lesson. “Essentials of Fiction proved that I could indeed write and I wrote every day, much to my boyfriend's dismay (waa sniff).” - Jill Gardner "I am loving the course and the peer interaction on the blog is fantastic!!!" "I'm enjoying the weekly email course, Essentials of Poetry Writing. "Thank you for all the material in this course. "I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the lessons and feel they were very helpful in introducing new ideas and perspectives to my writing.
7 Deceptively Hard Blogging Tasks at Weekly Articles About Blogging - NxE As a delightfully faddy sort of thing to be doing, blogging attracts waves and waves of newbies to its folds, all looking to get a blog started and for it to rise to success. Today I reflected on some of the tasks involved in blogging that have turned out to be a lot harder than I had expected. 1. The well known blogger Steve Pavlina once wrote in his must-read post on blogging: Can you make a decent income online? What makes this such a deceptively hard task is that the success stories of blogging have very loud megaphones and can leave you thinking your road to riches is just waiting to be trod. 2. Perhaps you are familiar with the blog SmashingMagazine, if not suffice to say that if you looked up giant linkbait lists in the dictionary, the Smashing logo would be right there next to it. 3. We all know about the Digg-Effect and the torrents of traffic that follow a frontpager. 4. 5. 6. When you first start a blog posting regularly is not so difficult. 7.
Etymology Dictionary English 50 Exercises for Story Writers English 50 – Intro to Creative Writing: Exercises for Story Writers Basic Theory: What is a short story? As soon as someone delivers a definition, some good writer will write a story that proves the theory wrong. Short stories have a narrator; that is, someone tells the story; have at least one character in them; have some action occur (or perhaps fails to occur); take place somewhere; that is, there is a setting for the action; and someone either learns something or fails to learn something (theme).With these five characteristics in mind, we can create an almost endless supply of exercises to help sharpen our techniques of story telling. Narrative Voice Twenty or so years ago, voice was the "rite of passage" into a successful writing career. Nevertheless, a narrative voice that sounds like it could be anyone's voice or is bland and boring, or riddled with pointless clichés will fail to capture and hold the reader's attention. If you've written a story in third person, try it in first.
CALLIHOO Writing Helps--Feelings Table Character Feelings You can describe your character's feelings in more exact terms than just "happy" or "sad." Check these lists for the exact nuance to describe your character's intensity of feelings. SF Characters | SF Items | SF Descriptors | SF Places | SF EventsSF Jobs/Occupations | Random Emotions | Emotions List | Intensity of Feelings WORD REFERENCE 20 Common Grammar Mistakes That (Almost) Everyone Gets Wrong I’ve edited a monthly magazine for more than six years, and it’s a job that’s come with more frustration than reward. If there’s one thing I am grateful for — and it sure isn’t the pay — it’s that my work has allowed endless time to hone my craft to Louis Skolnick levels of grammar geekery. As someone who slings red ink for a living, let me tell you: grammar is an ultra-micro component in the larger picture; it lies somewhere in the final steps of the editing trail; and as such it’s an overrated quasi-irrelevancy in the creative process, perpetuated into importance primarily by bitter nerds who accumulate tweed jackets and crippling inferiority complexes. But experience has also taught me that readers, for better or worse, will approach your work with a jaundiced eye and an itch to judge. While your grammar shouldn’t be a reflection of your creative powers or writing abilities, let’s face it — it usually is. Who and Whom This one opens a big can of worms. Which and That Lay and Lie Moot Nor
Ink - Quotes about writing by writers presented by The Fontayne Group Writing "I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark." Henry David Thoreau "Writing is an adventure." Winston Churchill "Know something, sugar? Stories only happen to people who can tell them." "Whether or not you write well, write bravely." "The first rule, indeed by itself virtually a sufficient condition for good style, is to have something to say." Best Places to Get Free Books – The Ultimate Guide When we were reviewing 10 of the best online resources for free books, we had a LOT of readers chime in with their own favorites as well. Thank you for all your helpful contributions! In fact, we had so many suggestions, we have enough to compile a huge list from them, so here they are in no particular order: ManyBooks – Free eBooks for your PDA, iPod, or eBook reader – Thanks Tony Bryan & abben BookCrossing – Where real books are released into the wild to be found by others – Thanks EngtechLibraryElf – The perfect companion to a public library system – Thanks EngtechScribd – Open library to publish and discover documents online – Thanks CincauHangus Word Public Library – 400,000 PDF ebooks for download – Thanks EllenFree Tech Books – Free computer science and engineering books (+ lecture notes) – Thanks EllenBookins – Swap real books with other readers – Thanks Jimbob WellToldTales – Free short story podcasts (like audiobooks, but shorter) – Thanks Kevin C. Google+
Well, At Least There Was Good Stuff to Read: The Books of the Decade Anybody remember how anxious and thrilled we were in those last months of the 20th century? When we weren't at war and we had a budget surplus and it looked like Al Gore would be president? The prospect of a 21st century filled with new technologies, new art and literature loomed large and bright. But now, as we look back at what was decidedly a shitty decade for an incredible variety of people in an equally incredible variety of ways (evictions/invasions/bombings/etc), it's surprisingly hard to be pessimistic about the books that assessed, satirized, dramatized and distracted us from the events of the past 10 years. Goethe said that the decline of a nation's literature is the precursor to that nation's fall, and with this look back at the books that defined the decade, we'd like to tell Goethe to suck it. To be clear: there were plenty of bad books over the course of the decade, as well.