Unique Plots Medieval Names - List of Medieval Names Character Profile Templates 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. The one thing I love, you take everything apart and give examples." - Katlen Skye "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. "Thanks very much for this course. "I'm learning so much. "Thank you so much!!
Character Flaw Index To make characters realistic and relatable they are given flaws, because if there is anything a writer can be sure of it is that no one in their audience will be perfect. Flaws are character traits that have a negative impact in the narrative, unless they are simply informed. They can also be exploited. Abusive Parents: Habitually violent and cruel to their own children, often because that's how they themselves were raised. Physical Descriptions - List of Hair Colors Hair Color List (Note: an updated and expanded version of this list appears in my 15K-word book How to Describe Hair and Skin. See below.) [First, my profound apologies to the vast majority of readers who don't steal content, but I have to state the following. This article and all content on this website belongs to Val Kovalin, copyright © Obsidianbookshelf.com, except where noted. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without written permission from Val Kovalin is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Val Kovalin and Obsidianbookshelf.com with a return link to the original content.] I'll admit it – hair colors are fun, even for someone like me who advocates keeping description to a minimum. Natural human hair color comes in these basic shades: blond(e), red, light brown, dark brown, black, gray, white. Don't forget about highlights! What are the nouns that apply to people with certain hair colors?
Finding your voice - making your writing sound like YOU Finding your voice by Christopher Meeks Developing a voice in your writing is a notion that passes over me every now and then like the "thung" sound of an error message on my computer. "I should develop a voice," I think. "My voice is off today," I think. "Maybe I should work on that voice thing," I think. To some people, the image of "voice" may be akin to a rotund person belting something out in Italian in front of a lot of penguin-suited people paying big bucks waiting for the crystal to shatter. Or, if that metaphor's a bit too extreme, think of "voice" as simply like your own voice. Since most of the information on the Web is text, you want your text to have a real voice, like your own. I can recognize voice in other people's work. One of the great voices of the century is Ernest Hemingway. Is there a way to work on "voice"? OK, we aren't Hemingway... We all want to change the way the next few generations speak, write, and think. How do we do that? Most days I don't worry about voice.
25 Things You Should Know About Word Choice 1. A Series Of Word Choices Here’s why this matters: because both writing and storytelling comprise, at the most basic level, a series of word choices. Words are the building blocks of what we do. They are the atoms of our elements. They are the eggs in our omelets. 2. Words are like LEGO bricks: the more we add, the more we define the reality of our playset. 3. You know that game — “Oh, you’re cold, colder, colder — oh! 4. Think of it like a different game, perhaps: you’re trying to say as much as possible with as few words as you can muster. 5. Finding the perfect word is as likely as finding a downy-soft unicorn with a pearlescent horn riding a skateboard made from the bones of your many enemies. 6. For every right word, you have an infinity of wrong ones. 7. You might use a word that either oversteps or fails to meet the idea you hope to present. 8. Remember how I said earlier that words are like LEGO, blah blah blah help define reality yadda yadda poop noise? 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.
5 Ways to Get Rid of Your Damn Empty Modifiers I discussed the need to get rid of empty emphatics when I gave you 8 words to seek and destroy in your writing, but just saying that you should get rid of a thing doesn't say much about the right way to do so. Today I'm going to show you a few of my favorite ways to get rid of your empty modifiers. What exactly is an empty modifier? It's any word whose only role is to intensify the word it's modifying. The prime candidates here are "very" and "really," but "extremely," "intensely," "totally," "absolutely," "quite," and many other emphatic modifiers make the list. Further, many emphatics that shift meaning slightly or add some flavor (e.g., "just" or "damn") should be approached with skepticism, and it's easy to find flimsy "-ly" words that show us why the road to hell is paved with adverbs. I'm not saying that empty modifiers should never be used. 1. Sylvia was very crazy. This is the easiest and often the best solution. 2. Bob was really ugly hideous. 3. Shane was really tall. 4. 5.
Famous Writers' Small Writing Sheds and Off-the-Grid Huts Previous image Next image Roald Dahl's writing hut, The Gipsy House When I hear the phrase "writing hut" or "backyard shed" my imagination practically squeals with delight. A small, intimate space furnished with the essentials. Low impact, high inspiration. Roald Dahl "The whole of the inside was organised as a place for writing: so the old wing-back chair had part of the back burrowed out to make it more comfortable; he had a sleeping bag that he put his legs in when it was cold and a footstool to rest them on; he had a very characteristic Roald arrangement for a writing table with a bar across the arms of the chair and a cardboard tube that altered the angle of the board on which he wrote. Mark Twain "It is the loveliest study you ever saw...octagonal with a peaked roof, each face filled with a spacious window...perched in complete isolation on the top of an elevation that commands leagues of valley and city and retreating ranges of distant blue hills. George Bernard Shaw Dylan Thomas
Recursive outlining and writing I am in the middle of writing my dissertation, and I’m constantly experimenting with my writing process flow and set-up. I have two monitors, a 19 and a 22-inch one. The overall writing process appears to be a recursive process of alternating between outlining and writing (though the two are not always clearly separable). My actual writing started once I got to a point that I had so many outlines in different outliners that the only way out of that morass was to start writing them up. To my surprise I have selected Word 2010 as my main writing tool. For times when I wouldn’t be using Dragon, I would want to use WordExpander to speed up the typing, and it turned out that it would display the pop-up menu of word choices by the cursor in Word but not in Scrivener. So, Word is open in my 19-in monitor that is facing me and where I do the final writing up (dictating with Dragon or typing with WordExpander). This describes the set-up of my outline-to-writing process. Like this: Like Loading...