Life Writing. Collage by Sonja, from Vija Celmins, “Eraser,” 1967, acrylic on balsa wood, Collection of the Orange County Museum of Art. For a long time, I’ve wanted to keep a diary. I tried throughout adolescence but always gave it up. I dreamt of being very frank, like Joe Orton, whose diaries I admired very much; I found them in the library when I was about 14. I read them half out of literary interest and half as pornography, thrilled to follow Joe around the many corners of the city in which I had only walked but he had managed to have illicit sex.
I thought: If you’re going to write a diary, it should be like this, it should be utterly free, honest. But I found I couldn’t write about sexual desires (too shy, too dishonest), nor could I describe any sexual activity—I wasn’t getting any—and so the diary devolved into a banal account of fake crushes and imagined romance and I was soon disgusted with it and put it aside. I realize I don’t want any record of my days. Copyright © 2015 by Zadie Smith. How To Pitch Stories To Code Switch : Code Switch. Like every team of reporters and editors at a major news outlet, Code Switch gets a lot of pitches for stories, and we can only greenlight a small percentage of them. The majority are from publicists interested in having us cover one of their clients. But we also get a healthy stream of pitches from potential freelancers. Having done freelance work, I know the pitching process can seem like a black box. It's easy to imagine editors laughing derisively at your story ideas (in my imagination, they're waving flutes of champagne, pinkies held aloft).
But the truth is that we love great pitches. So in the spirit of encouraging more great pitches, we wanted to share some things to keep in mind when you share your ideas with us. Remember, Code Switch focuses on race, ethnicity and culture. Make your pitch clear and easy to read. Pitch stories, not essays. Only very rarely do we greenlight an essay we didn't commission, and we don't publish polemics. Focused beats fuzzy every time. So pitch us! Llegir i escriure articles d'opinió | Catorze.cat. How to Be a Better Writer: 6 Tips From Harvard’s Steven Pinker. U want 2B a better writer? Good writing is often looked at as an art and, frankly, that can be intimidating. No need to worry. There are rules — even science — behind writing well. Our brain works a particular way; so what rules do we need to know to write the way the brain best understands?
To find out the answer I gave Steven Pinker a call. Steven is a cognitive scientist and linguist at Harvard. He’s also on the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary. Steven was recently ranked as one of the top 100 most eminent psychologists of the modern era. His latest book is The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century. Below you’ll learn: The two key elements that will improve your writing.The biggest mistake we all make — and how to fix it.The science behind what makes writing work.The most pleasant way to improve your knowledge of grammar. And a lot more. 1) Be Visual And Conversational One third of the human brain is dedicated to vision.
Here’s Steven: Tags: Write or Die: the software that offers struggling authors a simple choice | Technology. This is horrible! The novelist David Nicholls says that while working on his latest book Us he used a piece of software called Write or Die, which starts to delete what you are writing if you pause for too long. “I was convinced that there was a novel in me and I had to just spew it out on to the page,” Nicholls told an audience at the Cheltenham Literary festival. “I produced huge piles of paper and I saw it was all rubbish. It was as if I was writing with a gun to my head.” I agree. I can say so because I have been asked to write this article both about Write or Die, and on it and, under the circumstances, the only way I could do justice to the stress would be with a list of swearwords.
Having readied that quote from Nicholls, I set a target of 400 words in one hour and activated the evil setting. I have tried adding and deleting spaces, like dribbling a basketball when I want to stand still. Actually, I think the second half of that is healthy. Three anti-social skills to improve your writing - Nadia Kalman. E.B. White wrote, “The best writing is rewriting.” With that idea in mind, look at a few of the examples of ineffective dialogue in the blog post, “Bad Dialogue – Bad, Bad Dialogue,” by Beth Hill, at Now, select one example to rewrite and improve. If it’s repetitive, eliminate the repetition. If it’s too formal or stilted, mutter to yourself until you come up with a more natural-sounding version. The author Mark Twain is considered a master of dialogue, but his use of dialect – and particularly his phonetic rendering of African-American speech in the novel Huckleberry Finn – is the subject of controversy.
. - An overview of various attitudes towards the novel in the PBS teachers’ guide to Huck Finn: - Leslie Gregory’s article, “Finding Jim Behind the Mask,” in Ampersand, available at. 30 Incorrectly Used Words That Can Make You Look Horrible. Download - Ommwriter. Write for. A lot of what makes Cosmopolitan such a brilliant place to work is the HUGE connection it has with its readers. We get emails from you every single day, and love your comments on Twitter and Facebook, ranging from the witty and hilarious to the truly considered and impactful.
So we're inviting you to bring those skills onto Cosmopolitan.co.uk and write for us. We want to hear about an experience you've had that's worth talking about, that's made you look at things differently. In around 800 words, we want to hear about something that's really struck a chord with you; whether it be something that had a profound effect on you emotionally; something that was traumatic, but you've come out of the other side and want to share your story; a mind-blowing experience you've had; a life lesson you've learned; or just something that happened to you that was hilarious and that we and the world need to know about. Submission deadline 31st December 2014 - full terms and conditions can be found here. Write for. Study work Gap Programmes|City Travel Review. Writing Advice. Well, first off, boring writing covers a multitude of sins. Without looking at your writing (which I can’t do), I can’t tell you why it’s boring exactly, any more than if you call up a doctor and tell her you don’t feel well, she can tell you what’s wrong with you exactly.
The differential, so to speak, is vast. This is why you need someone — a teacher, friends, ideally a class of writing students — reading your work and giving you feedback. If you are convinced that your writing is boring, ask yourself a few questions: Are you including details that aren’t necessary to the story, just to pad out scenes and make them seem longer/more important?
“Joe got up and brushed his hair and then his teeth. Can be edited down to this: “Joe went to work.” Unless there is something remotely important about the tooth brushing, the breakfast food, or the locking of the front door, skip it all. Are you overstating characters’ emotions in order to make everything seem more dramatic? (permalink) Foreshadowing. Examples[edit] An example of foreshadowing from the book trilogy and its screen adaptation The Lord of the Rings:[6] —Frodo: What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature [Gollum], when he had a chance! —Gandalf: Pity? It was pity that stayed his hand. [...] Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? This conversation foreshadows the fact that later in the story Frodo himself pities Gollum and is unable to kill him. “Keep him!” Foreshadowing is used in much of the works of John Steinbeck. See also[edit] Chekhov's gun References[edit]
Character Names - Tips for Writers on Naming Characters | BabyNames. There are many literary and movie characters that become everlasting brands in our culture—Atticus Finch, 'Ratso' Rizzo, Holden Caulfield and Scarlett O'Hara, for example. If you name your character right, you will choose a name that is unique to your character and memorable to your story. The names you choose should reveal something about your characters: who they are, where they come from or where they are going. Here are several tips we compiled for writers of stories, novels, tv and movies to help you choose the perfect name for your characters. For more in-depth info, check out CharacterNames.com! Tip 1: Make the name age-appropriate The biggest mistake we see writers make is choosing a character name that is not age-appropriate.
Tip 2: Choose a name by meaning Many writers give their characters names that have significance in the story. Tip 3: Exotic romance names are out Tip 4: Science fiction names don't have to sound alien Tip 5: Terms of Endearment Tip 6: Overused Names. Name That Character! By Anne Marble A character's name is a basic part of that character, but it can sometimes be hard to come by just the right name. These tips might make that passage a little easier. Warning! Names Stick to Your Brain! If you can't think of a name right away, you might decide to try out a temporary name on a character. Or you might give your character a name and only later realize that it's not very good. Still, it's only a first draft, what harm could it do? Ten Tips on Choosing Names Let the Names Reflect the Characters Give characters names that tell you something about them. Make Sure the Name Doesn't Belong to Someone Famous Sometimes, when you hit the right name, it will feel just right, as if it had been on the tip of your tongue, as if you had known your character's name all along and just had to remember it.
This doesn't mean that you have to come up with a name that no one has. Avoid Names That End in S This tip sounds trivial, but it can save you a lot of trouble later. I confess. Ways to Know If Your Novel Idea Is Novel-Worthy -- Will Your Novel Idea Make a Good Book? The short story and the novel differ in many ways, but the most important consideration is the time commitment involved. While it's relatively uncommon for a writer to work consistently on a short story for years, the average novel takes 3-7 years to complete.
If you're going to commit that much of your life to a project, you obviously want to be sure your novel idea is a good one. So how do you know if your idea is novel-worthy? A few questions will help you decide. 1. Does something happen? It may sound simplistic, but for many people, plot is one of the hardest elements to grasp. 2. If you're reading this article, you probably do care about your audience. 3. While you must consider your audience, don't be afraid to write something risky or outside the mainstream. 4. The most important person you have to sell on your idea is yourself. Beware the Mary Sue Character - Fiction Writing. In a nutshell, the Mary Sue character is beautiful, talented, brilliant – and nice, which means that everyone loves her. And I mean everyone, except for the obviously inferior villain. But the Mary Sue’s modesty makes her unaware of her own perfection and everyone else’s devotion to her, so she worries about whether people like her.
Meanwhile, she has a few minor “faults” such as slight clumsiness or big feet. Or maybe she frets about what are obviously desirable traits: I’m too tall! You might be thinking, “Oh, please!” Sometimes, it happens because of genre. Every story begins with first one and then the other of two parts: a character and a situation/concept. To safeguard against the Mary Sue character, balance the good with the bad within the same type of attribute. But what if you’re writing a romance and you want your character to be beautiful? The Big Cover-Up: A Writer’s Role in Book Jacket Design. Walt Whitman didn't have an art director like Gall. When he first published Leaves of Grass, in 1855, he chose the stamped floral design that framed the book's title himself. Whitman is among the many authors who, by invitation or necessity, have designed their own covers.
Evelyn Waugh came up with the jacket designs for the first editions of his novels Decline and Fall (Chapman & Hall, 1928) and Vile Bodies (Chapman & Hall, 1930). In 1937, J. Novelist Elizabeth Evans has published novels with both small presses and large publishers, and she has designed her own covers for both. "To show [my editor] what I had in mind, I made a collage of photos, cut-up playing cards, newspaper clippings, scientific drawings, coins, and a gorgeous hot-pink wrapper from a bar of Chinese soap. The fact that Chip Kidd designed the cover for his novel The Cheese Monkeys, published by Scribner in 2001, should come as no surprise. "I was freaking out," Kidd says.
Author Max Barry would likely agree. Oached Pish - From notes to novel. All this month Justine Larbalestier has been answering questions about the process of writing from her readers. It's so interesting reading about others' processes: sometimes it's a relief when someone has as one-legged-rooster-riding-a-rocking-chair messy an approach as I have; other times it's fascinating when someone has a process that obviously works, but seems totally alien to my brain. Anyway, she shared this question, as the person's process differs from hers so much: How do you organize all the jumbles of idea generating, plot generating, character generating, and so on, in order to see what you have, so you can then take it and put it all together somehow? In my example, I have a 100 page document focused on one story (one novel) only.
If you've got an answer for this person, jump right to comments either here or at Justine's blog when this question goes live: below the cut is my own answer. Answer, not advice. So . . . that's all there, but where to begin? Can You Make Money Writing Novels? | PoeWar Writing Jobs. Can anyone write novels? There are no educational or social requirements to becoming a novelist. Education helps you develop writing skills and get involved in the community of writing, but it is not a requirement for success.
The main requirement is that you write a novel. The better written and more marketable your novel is, the better your chances. In the end, the elements that lead to the successful marketing of a novel have little to do with educational or social background. What types of novels sell well? Genre novels tend to be the easiest to market. How do I find a publisher? There are many small and mid-sized publishers who are open to new writers. Typically a writer is represented by a literary agent. How many novels do I have to sell to make money? Here is where you run into trouble. While the Stephen Kings and J.K. Are there other ways for novelists to make money? Many novelists hold full-time jobs in publishing or education. Can I self publish?
I’m sad now, can you cheer me up? Publishing Money Myths | Frost Light. Editorial Ass: And You Thought a Royalty Involved a Crown. John Scalzi’s Utterly Useless Writing Advice. How to rewrite. Too Young to Publish. Persons of Interest. 2: The Zen of First (Zero) Drafts. JWAM reader request no. 9: Plot similarities. Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don’t. The Swivet: All new & revised: On word counts and novel length. How to write dialogue. Writesf.
Article by Diana Wynne Jones on writing.
NaNoWriMo. NanoLog. yWriter5 - Free writing software designed by an author, not a salesman. NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month. Writing The Perfect Scene: Advanced Fiction Writing Tips. How to write a novel. Outlining, Mapping, Organizing your writing. On Teens, and the Fact Their Writing Sucks. 10 Things Teenage Writers Should Know About Writing. Cassandraclare: tips for teen writers. Steph Bowe's Hey! Teenager of the Year: Does age matter in publishing? Pub Rants: Age Is Just A Number. Absolute Write Water Cooler - View Single Post - Ask Jennifer Laughran! Tireless agent-in-residence!
Whatever: Broken-Hearted Books. RW1: Day in the life. Book = Teh Devil. Diana Peterfreund Blog | An Epidemic of Plagiarism in the Indie World. How to write a novel* Whatever: Cafe Society. Scrivener Writing Software | Mac OS X | Windows. Scrivener (updated) How to Write a Novel Redux. Maureen Johnson Books » Blog Archive » AUNTIE MJ’S INTERNET SCHOOL. Maureen Johnson Books » Blog Archive » ASK AUNTIE MJ: NOW YOU ARE JUST MAKING UP WORDS.
How to write a novel* Writing FAQ. Inspiration, Writer's Block, 'Getting Started' Story Sensei: The Sagging Middle. Story Sensei: How To Write Backstory Without Putting Your Reader To Sleep. Vivian Vande Velde. Writing Advice.