The Ultimate Guide to Writing Better Than You Normally Do. Writing is a muscle. Smaller than a hamstring and slightly bigger than a bicep, and it needs to be exercised to get stronger. Think of your words as reps, your paragraphs as sets, your pages as daily workouts. Think of your laptop as a machine like the one at the gym where you open and close your inner thighs in front of everyone, exposing both your insecurities and your genitals. Because that is what writing is all about. Procrastination is an alluring siren taunting you to google the country where Balki from Perfect Strangers was from, and to arrange sticky notes on your dog in the shape of hilarious dog shorts.
The blank white page. Mark Twain once said, “Show, don’t tell.” Finding a really good muse these days isn’t easy, so plan on going through quite a few before landing on a winner. There are two things more difficult than writing. It’s no secret that great writers are great readers, and that if you can’t read, your writing will often suffer.
OhLife helps you remember what's happened in your life. National Novel Writing Month. 36 Writing Essays by Chuck Palahniuk. 1: Establishing Your Authority Chuck teaches two principal methods for building a narrative voice your readers will believe in. Discover the Heart Method and the Head Method and how to employ each to greatest effect. 2: Developing a Theme At the core of Minimalism is focusing any piece of writing to support one or two major themes. 3: Using “On-The-Body” Physical Sensation Great writing must reach both the mind and the heart of your reader, but to effectively suspend reality in favor of the fictional world, you must communicate on a physical level, as well. 4: Submerging the “I” First-person narration, for all its immediacy and power, becomes a liability if your reader can't identify with your narrator. 5: Nuts and Bolts: Hiding a Gun Sometimes called "plants and payoffs" in the language of screenwriters, Hiding a Gun is an essential skill to the writer's arsenal that university writing courses almost never touch upon. 6: Nuts and Bolts: “Thought” Verbs 8: Nuts and Bolts: Using Choruses.
50 Free Resources That Will Improve Your Writing Skills. Advertisement Today, too many websites are still inaccessible. In our new book Inclusive Design Patterns, we explore how to craft flexible front-end design patterns and make future-proof and accessible interfaces without extra effort. Hardcover, 312 pages. Get the book now! Effective writing skills are to a writer what petrol is to a car. Of course, effective writing requires a good command of the language in which you write or want to write. Further Reading on SmashingMag: Link We collected over 50 useful and practical tools and resources that will help you to improve your writing skills. 1. Use English Punctuation Correctly6 A quick and useful crash course in English punctuation.
HyperGrammar7 An extensive electronic grammar course at the University of Ottawa’s Writing Centre. Grammar Girl8 Mignon Fogarty’s quick and dirty tips for better writing. English Style Guide – Economist16 This guide is based on the style book which is given to all journalists at The Economist. 2. Dr. 3. 4. 5. 6. 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. They are the shots of liquor in our cocktails. Get it right? 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. 9. Incorrect word choice means you’re using the wrong damn word. 10. 11. Poem Starters and Creative Writing Ideas. 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.
Thanks so much for the great courses. " - Kitty Safken “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. "I'm learning so much.