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…
Tag: Writing process
Who are you writing for?
There’s only one answer to the question ‘Who you are writing for?’ and that’s yourself. You write in a language and style that you know, and you create something that you would love to read. You write what you know, and you write for yourself. So why all the writing advice? What’s that all about?…
How to write realistic dialogue: an introduction.
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…
ChatGPT and Creative Writing.
ChatGPT is a hot topic, but is it relevant to Creative Writing? Creative Writing is a craft that requires inspiration, imagination, and a lot of hard work. But would writers embrace a tool that could help them generate ideas, overcome writer’s block, and even write entire scenes? ChatGPT offers to do just that. In this…
On Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet.
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…
What’s the difference between poetry and prose?
The difference between poetry and prose sounds like a superfluous question until you’re a writer with a bunch of words on a page (or still in your head) and you don’t know if you’re writing a poem or a story. The difference isn’t in the length, for there’s that famous six-word story that Hemingway wrote…
Can Poetry be Taught?
I enrolled on a Creative Writing degree with a passion for poetry, several full notebooks of practice, and the hope that the place would show me how to become a poet. I knew it would take work, and I also knew that not everyone could learn. If a student didn’t have any interest and talent…
How to Edit Well: 14 Micro Editing Tips.
Here’s an editing cheat sheet. I’ve used it for almost ten years since the most influential teacher of my life handed it to me. In ‘The best writing advice anyone has given me‘ and ‘Should writers worry about offending readers,’ I shared advice from Carl Tighe and Moy McCrory. But it was Adrian Buckner, another…
Be Succinct in your Writing.
Your writing is more cluttered than you realise. Mine, too. I know because I see it every time I read through and edit. When working through our first and second drafts, be on the lookout for everything that doesn’t need to be there. Be succinct in your writing, focus on one flower instead of the entire…
Kill Your Darlings.
For some, it’s a fundamental and obvious piece of writing advice that they’ve practiced for years. To others, it sounds so odd that following it would be detrimental to your writing. Because why would you want to kill your darlings? Aren’t they supposed to be cherished and nurtured? This post will show what the phrase…