Category: on prose writing

A Special Feature Series: See Part 1 and Part 2. Writing craft books and writing teachers will tell you that readers read for character. Indeed, the cornerstone of literary fiction is the complex character study. At a minimum, even the most surface-dwelling, plot-driven genre novel needs engaging characters to carry the story. These characters are…

Dennis Lehane and the Four D’s If you are close to my age, or even a decade or so younger, you may remember a professional athlete whose career spanned the late eighties and early nineties. His name was Bo Jackson. He won college football’s Heisman Trophy in 1985, made his major league debut with the Kansas City…

In my last post, “The Department of Redundancy Department,” I discussed how I use the Find feature of Microsoft Word to hunt down and eliminate redundant redundancies from my manuscripts as I go through the final edit. I also mentioned how I’ll use Find to ferret out those pesky to be verbs and get rid of as many of those as…

I’d like to call your attention to an editing tool for the editing of redundant words and redundant word phrases that turn up in rough drafts and not-so-rough drafts (what?).  Why is this important? First, good writing is concise. Thomas Jefferson said, “The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” When someone writes past experience, fatally killed, foreign…

I knew early what I didn’t want to read. Though I longed for adventure my mother bought me all the usual little girl comics/magazines containing stories about ballerinas in pink tutus, owning a pony, or cute puppies and donkeys. Even at such a tender age I didn’t care for them. I’d rather be out climbing…

I hear a voice in my head. She begins speaking when I’m walking, taking a shower, or trying to sleep. She starts to tell me her story. I sit at the computer screen and hope to capture the story, but nothing happens. I’m not blocked exactly. It’s just that she doesn’t want to speak through…