Literature and Creative Writing. 10 Reasons Why Cormac McCarthy Is A Badass. Cormac McCarthy is one of our greatest living American novelists.
Author of Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men, and The Road (which won the Pulitzer Prize), McCarthy is a poetic storyteller whose challenging novels explore themes of violence, good and evil, and human survival. Although he’s definitely not everyone’s taste (several of my friends positively loathe him), I personally think the guy is a literary badass. Zadie Smith’s 10 Rules of Writing. 101 of the Best Fiction Writing Tips, Part I. What if someone went through the biggest and best blogs on the internet, and pulled out the very best-of-the best tips for fiction writers?
That’s what I’ve attempted to do here. I can’t guarantee there aren’t some amazingly helpful writing tips that I haven’t included, but this is a good start. I’ve also tried to steer clear of really obvious tips like “show, don’t tell” or “make your characters unforgettable,” in favour of ones that are less often discussed. To learn more about the tips, click through to their original articles. Thanks to all these amazing bloggers for their valuable advice! Now, head over to: Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling « Aerogramme Writers' Studio. These rules were originally tweeted by Emma Coats, Pixar’s Story Artist.
Number 9 on the list – When you’re stuck, make a list of what wouldn’t happen next – is a great one and can apply to writers in all genres. You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be very different.Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. English 50 Exercises for Story Writers. English 50 – Intro to Creative Writing: Exercises for Story Writers Basic Theory: What is a short story?
As soon as someone delivers a definition, some good writer will write a story that proves the theory wrong. About the only thing we can say for sure is that short stories are short and that they are written in what we call prose. Some attributes, however, seem to show up more often than not. Short stories have a narrator; that is, someone tells the story; have at least one character in them; have some action occur (or perhaps fails to occur); take place somewhere; that is, there is a setting for the action; and someone either learns something or fails to learn something (theme).With these five characteristics in mind, we can create an almost endless supply of exercises to help sharpen our techniques of story telling.
Narrative Voice Twenty or so years ago, voice was the "rite of passage" into a successful writing career. If you've written a story in third person, try it in first. George Orwell: Politics and the English Language. Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it.
Our civilization is decadent and our language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.
Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. DYING METAPHORS. OPERATORS OR VERBAL FALSE LIMBS. Seven Tips From Ernest Hemingway on How to Write Fiction. Image by Lloyd Arnold via Wikimedia Commons Before he was a big game hunter, before he was a deep-sea fisherman, Ernest Hemingway was a craftsman who would rise very early in the morning and write.
His best stories are masterpieces of the modern era, and his prose style is one of the most influential of the 20th century. Hemingway never wrote a treatise on the art of writing fiction. He did, however, leave behind a great many passages in letters, articles and books with opinions and advice on writing. Funny-chart-synonyms-words-fear-anger.jpg (426×487)