Variety is Not Always the Spice of Life

We’ve all seen authors use favorite words, expressions, or writing habits over and over — and over. Habit, perhaps. No thesaurus — or imagination. A personal schtick. So the reader gets to a point where every time we come across it, we wince. [A favorite mystery author of mine often uses a character’s full name […]

Modifiers: Adding Adjectives and Adverbs

On another blog post, I commented that sometimes the best way to give additional information is casually through an action sentence. The example I gave there was Her green eyes were friendly as she shook his hand. In this sentence, you have offered up her eye color as a modifier for something that matters in […]

Show, Don’t Tell

Writing advice is often full of sage, over-generalized clichés. Famous ones include “write what you know,” and “less is more.” Today, we will be discussing another cliché: the concept of “show, don’t tell.” Like most writing advice, it’s important, but needs context. What is show, don’t tell, and why does it matter? Show, don’t tell […]

Helpful Hints Part 1

When writing anything, be it fiction, non-fiction, work-related, or academic, there are certain mistakes that are commonly made. This is a list of some of the most common and how to avoid them: English is a funny language. We have many words that sound the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings and […]

Helpful Hints Part 2

In another blogpost, I discuss some commonly misused words. Here I want to cover some commonly misused phrases. I don’t care much for clichés and consistently urge their omission in professional work, and their use in fiction to be limited mostly to dialogue. Blame the character. In that spirit, I could say that everything below […]