Some of you may enjoy Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey, and Harry Potter, but they aren’t better than anything Hemingway, Camus, or Proust has written. It’s not my intention to start something controversial here. I just want to stress the importance of objectivity in writing and education, and this seemed like a good place to…
Author: samuel
What is the purpose of dialogue?
Every line of dialogue must serve a purpose. This instruction was something that I mentioned in my introductory post on the subject, How to write realistic dialogue? I half-dismissed it because every line of your writing – not only conversations between characters – must serve a purpose, but now I want to explore that point…
What does Kafkaesque mean?
If you haven’t read The Trial by Kafka, I’ll try not to spoil too much in this article, but I’m going to use it as an example to answer the question, What does Kafkaesque mean? Also, if you haven’t read The Trial, I’ll be glad if this post reminds or encourages you to do so. Two unidentified agents arrest Josef K….
Active vs Passive Voice: the difference and why it matters.
Active vs passive voice is all about verbs. A verb can have an active voice or a passive voice, and it’s generally better to choose the active. The active voice makes the subject of a sentence perform the verb’s action. It makes a sentence more direct. It’s strong and more precise. The passive voice means…
Is the idea the best part of the writing process?
Nothing you write can ever be as pure or perfect as your idea. That’s the writer’s challenge, and that’s what keeps me up at night. It keeps me alive. This lifelong pursuit of perfection. How can I express on the page the strange feeling that carried itself into my daydream? Turning this intangible idea into…
Planning a novel (a step-by-step guide).
In my previous post, How to plan a novel, I answered a subscriber request to discuss planning a novel. I shared my process, which is on the light side of planning until the right vehicle for my character emerges. But some writers plan a significant amount of the story (sometimes the entire story) before they…
How to plan a novel.
I’m writing this post because an About Writing subscriber got in touch to request more detail on how to plan a novel. In this post, I’ll talk about my experience. In next week’s, I’ll provide a step-by-step plan that some other writers follow. The creative stereotype sometimes pigeonholes us as whimsical hedonists living from one…
How long should a novel be?
As a general rule, I believe that every work of art exists mainly in isolation, without too much regard for conventions and confining rules. If a story needs to be shorter or longer, it should be, even if that goes against advice. Some of the best novels break the rules – but they rebel with…
How to write a novel.
Every novelist has a unique process. A certain breed of writer can write a novel in fifteen or thirty days, some taking part in NaNoWriMo. It’s not something I’ve tried, but, time permitting, I want to in the future. It’s a good way to get down a solid first draft, writing freely without time to…
Natalie Goldberg’s First Thoughts.
In a previous post, What you must know before you start writing, I mentioned Natalie Goldberg’s First Thoughts writing experiment from Writing Down the Bones. I wrote about it as an opportunity to give your imagination the chance to surprise you, as a way to overcome writer’s block. And I explored the idea of incorporating the…