I haven’t been updating the blog as often as I usually do because I’m deep into something—my novel. And I had to remind myself very recently that ‘If you’re going to try, go all the way.’ By the way, I will start posting regularly again, and I see this site as a long-term project that…
Tag: Writing Advice
Be Specific in your Writing.
When I moved into an apartment by the Maritsa River in Plovdiv, I became fixated on the trees that lined it. They made me feel something, a seemingly unfounded melancholy. And I knew that one day I would use them for a story. Because fiction is much stronger when the writing is specific, I knew…
What is a motif?
Understanding the motifs in your writing will help your creative process and how you talk about and sell your work. In this post, I’ll define a motif, show how it differs from a theme, and then suggest how you might use a motif in a story. A motif is a dominant or recurring idea with…
Questions writers should ask themselves.
I’ve collected this list of questions writers should ask themselves through a combination of research and experience. You may have read some of these before, and maybe even thought about them, but it’s never a bad time to go over them again. I sat and thought about each one again myself while compiling this list:…
Avoid clichés.
Avoid clichés at all costs. Avoid clichés like the plague. A cliché is something that some other writer has already written. The only real point of writing or creating anything is to write or create it yourself. Becoming a better creative writer means embracing originality and pushing boundaries. You create to contribute something new. I’m…
Realistic dialogue shouldn’t sound too real.
Writers are great observers. We pay attention to people’s mannerisms and listen to conversations in cafes and train stations. Something we all know is that real-life conversation is not realistic dialogue. More than other writers, this is something I need to be reminded of because I love realism. I attempt to write my dialogue as…
What is subtext?
A previous post on writing dialogue with purpose is critical information, but it’s still just a small part of writing good and realistic dialogue overall. A line packed with purpose, for example, could still be a poor line if it lacks subtext. I’ll show what subtext is and explain why subtext is important to dialogue. …
The importance of objectivity in writing and education.
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…
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…
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…