If you’ve read any book on writing and style development, you are familiar with the rule to avoid adverbs. As a novice writer, I’ve always wondered why is that the case, but the more experienced I became with editing the more clear it became. Let’s look at some examples which you might find in your first drafts. He went to the hospital quickly. The verb in this sentence represents an action; someone moved from one
If you wish to improve your writing, you need to be more patient. Writing is a complex process and it requires going through several stages from start to finish. We crave to bring our words into the world as promptly as viable. The desire for being heard burns in our insides and we type as rapidly as we can. As soon as we’re done with the first draft we’d like to hit the “publish” button.
The key to getting a job done is to treat your writing as a proper project. It’s not just sit down and write some words and everything will take care of by itself. You need to make a list of required mini tasks. Usually, it looks like this: Preparation: Get the idea Think of a character Figure out the character’s goal Think of a setting Think of an outer conflict Think of an inner conflict
This morning I’ve reached for one of my old stories and brought it back to existence. The readers in Serbia have appreciated it and a literary magazine published it three years ago. My intention was to translate it and distribute it to my English-speaking audience. According to my recollection, it was a solid, creepy, dark story, and I was hungry to work on it. Once I opened it, I realized that it’s a tremendous pile
Writers often brag with their refined vocabularies. Some of them swear that they never use a thesaurus or any alternative form of glossaries. According to some, applying these tools is a heresy and dishonor. Is applying tools, such as Grammarly or ProWritingAid unethical? Is it cheating or is it a clever exploit of tools and technology which can assist you to improve your writing? Yes, authors should use a reference book if they can’t pick
No, I’m not starting a podcast; yet. Honestly, I didn’t think positively about podcasts until recently. For me, it was like: WTF!? People are sitting in their rooms, talking to themselves and they expect someone to listen to that shit? But, let’s set my ignorant part aside for now. Somewhere during the last year, I discovered Seth Godin. I’ve started to listen to his audiobooks and to read his blogs, just to find out that
Blogging is something I enjoy doing really much. I’ve written more than 100 posts in the last 6 months or so but now it’s time to level up. I want my blog to have a purpose, to add value and to help me to connect me with my readers. Since I’ve started this blog I mainly wrote about writing because that’s what we, authors love doing; blabbering about writing. While that’s interesting to us, I
We are entering the third week of the new year, and if you’re like me, most of your New Year’s resolutions are gone through the window and you’re back to your old routine and nothing in your life has changed. Most of our New Year’s resolutions are built around some sort of change in our lives. We want to improve our health, relationships, status, and, in general, to live a better life and to become
Basically, there would be four main reasons for reading your own stories. 1 Drafting You finished your first, second, third,… draft, you’ve let it rest and now you want to edit. 2 Collecting You’ve written plenty of short stories, blog posts, articles,… and you want to assemble a collection book. 3 Being mentioned Someone read your story and mentioned it to you, but you forgot all about it and you have to read it before
Sometimes, while writing we need to make a shift in our perspectives and instead of usual thinking, we need to think like a reader. Try to imagine reading your book as somebody elses, and then question what you expect from any book which you happen to read. What kind of language do you expect? Are you in for the excitement? Do you like being surprised? What kind of character wakes empathy with you? Do you