Never write in the passive voice. That little gem could be great advice. It could help you light a fire under your writing! If you know what passive voice really is. First, please allow me to explain what passive voice is NOT. Many folks understand it to mean dull writing. You know, the kind of […]
Casting characters–and avoiding cardboard cutouts
Characters have to have a goal. Everybody wants something. Why do YOU want to write, for example? Maybe you want to write a book for the story’s sake. A vociferous, misunderstood character started vying for your mental attention and enthralled you with his antics. He gets under your skin in all the right ways, and […]
Get Your Grammar Fix(ed): Aw, yeah. Or is it Awe? Yay!
Aw, yeah. While today’s post isn’t about grammar, per se, it WAS one of the common mistakes mentioned (more than once) by our readers. And it’s fun, so I’m doing it. I still promise to keep it under one minute. This is something that peeves a lot of people: mixing up the words awe, aw, ah, […]
Get Your Grammar Fix(ed): Lie vs. Lay
Grammar Fix is coming up, but we’ve got a winner to announce first! Here we go, you guys! THANK YOU for commenting and following our blog. Keep it up, keep it up! As promised, I put all of our followers/commenters into the random number generator. Boyfriend-Who-Is-My-Husband selected our lucky winner. [Looks around to see if […]
Get Your Grammar Fix(ed): A New Series
Grammar. In a minute or less. If I were to offer help getting a handle on the grammar of the English language in under a minute each week, would you take me up on it? Think of it as one-minute professional development. You spend time learning how to structure your plot, how to […]
See what I’m up to out there…