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What does Kafkaesque mean?

Posted on July 25, 2021July 25, 2021

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….

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How to write realistic dialogue: an introduction.

Posted on July 17, 2021July 17, 2021

There’s a lot of good, easy-to-follow advice on ‘how to write realistic dialogue,’ and I will soon share my ideas on that here, but this first post on the subject will cover when and why I choose to use dialogue. Every writer should have this conversation with themselves before refining the dialogue that’s already on…

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How to write with style – with Kurt Vonnegut.

Posted on July 11, 2021July 11, 2021

Kurt Vonnegut was a great writer. He was an author with a unique voice, and he once published some of his insight with a short piece that I now want to share, titled How to write with style. He published fourteen novels, three short story collections, five plays, and five non-fiction books throughout his career. After…

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Active vs Passive Voice: the difference and why it matters.

Posted on July 4, 2021July 4, 2021

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…

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Is the idea the best part of the writing process?

Posted on June 27, 2021June 27, 2021

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…

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Planning a novel (a step-by-step guide).

Posted on June 18, 2021June 18, 2021

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…

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How to plan a novel.

Posted on June 13, 2021June 13, 2021

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…

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How long should a novel be?

Posted on June 6, 2021June 6, 2021

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…

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On Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet.

Posted on May 29, 2021June 3, 2021

Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry is notoriously difficult to translate. For non-German speakers, Rilke’s writing in Letters to a Young Poet is the closest we can get to the poet. It doesn’t only bring us closer to his writing style, but also the man and the general nature of poetry and writing. In Letters to a…

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How to write a novel.

Posted on May 8, 2021May 8, 2021

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…

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