I just critiqued a short piece where some friends are driving home from a party, gossiping about others they just left. There is some description of the drive, but the piece was almost entirely talking heads. Worse than that, since we get no description of the speakers, they’re disembodied talking heads, without the fake smile and coifs of a newscaster to look at. Granted, the dialogue is what this story […]
Talking Heads
Double Duty
I’ve been working and thinking a lot about various things related to writing. One is layering. By layering I mean multiple levels of meaning or connection so that there is more than one thread connecting every phrase to the plot, the setting, the personalities, or the themes. In other words, why describe the light as “clear and bright” when you can say “cutting through the darkness like a knife” if […]
Word frequency counter; an add-in for Word
I have to give a shout-out to this word frequency counter add-in for Word: http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/word_tip_pages/word_usage_and_frequency_report.html Word frequency is something I review when self-editing. Get a count of each word, decide which ones I’m overusing, do a search-and-replace-with-highlight in Word and it’s easy to read and consider options. Word will count words, but not give you a frequency. There are web sites that will do this, but you have to upload […]
Painting with Words
It’s been pointed out to me (and I’ve been subconsciously aware) that my writing over the past year or two has become more convoluted and laced with more (sometimes) challenging grammatical errors. A few factors: more complicated situations and characters desire to push my prose poetic licence But I’m beginning to think the biggest factor is that I’m writing and editing like an improvising painter. I decide that a situation […]