Rick Taubold's Blog, page 9

April 9, 2018

Delivering the bad news when someone’s writing sucks

From Rick: What do you do when you’ve been asked to read and comment, or review (or edit) a piece where the writing sucks and there’s graceful no way to bow out? First off, suggesting that someone’s writing sucks sounds rather harsh. I’m not talking about writing a few minor issues or is laden with […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...
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Published on April 09, 2018 15:32

April 2, 2018

Naming strategies—people, places, and things

From Scott: Naming your characters (and the places and things) in your story can be more challenging than it appears at first glance. After all, they’re your characters, so you can name them whatever you want, right? True, but to keep your reader engaged in the story, rather than wondering why you named someone (or […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...
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Published on April 02, 2018 19:36

March 26, 2018

Commonly misused words, once again

From Rick: From the link below I copied what I felt were the most common mistakes that I see in writing and added notes and examples and the word “nock” to the list. The sentences I added show examples (preceded by >>) of how many people misuse the words in question. My comments are preceded […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...
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Published on March 26, 2018 15:19

March 19, 2018

Some punctuation tips for writers

From Rick: While I’m in the process of revising Punctuation For Fiction Writers, I thought I’d do a post on a few tips about using hyphens, dashes, and ellipses. I’ll also discuss the five uses of quotation marks, as inspired by a recent article from Daily Writing Tips. 5 FUNCTIONS OF QUOTATIONS MARKS Let’s start […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...
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Published on March 19, 2018 17:55

March 12, 2018

The challenge of writing a good story ending

From Rick: A few months back I talked about the importance of having a strong ending. THE IMPORTANCE OF A STRONG ENDING Writing a good, strong ending can be a challenge, but as I pointed out in the previous blog post on strong endings, I can’t begin to tell you how many stories I read […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...
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Published on March 12, 2018 17:54

March 6, 2018

Some interim reading material

From Rick: I had two posts I was working on for possible use this week, but I didn’t have time to finish either one. One deals with creating great story endings and the other is how to read a publishing contract, or at least make some sense of it and the red flags in contracts. […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...
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Published on March 06, 2018 17:46

February 27, 2018

Cleaning up your manuscript—Part 3

From Rick: In Part-2 of this series, I promised a Part-3 to deal with how to create a clean source file. As often happens, other projects that were already running behind prevented me from tackling this third part of the series at the time. For those who missed the previous posts, here’s the link to […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...
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Published on February 27, 2018 10:41

February 19, 2018

Mastering verb tenses—Part 6: Verb tense shifts

From Rick: It’s been a while since I talked about verb tenses. The last article that dealt with them in part was back on April 11, 2016 as part of an article on Common Writing Mistakes-Part 1. Before that, I had done a five-part series on verb tenses. You can find those articles (and the […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...
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Published on February 19, 2018 17:22

February 12, 2018

When a publisher comes knocking

From Rick: I often receive inspiration for these blog posts from questions I am asked. Last week, someone asked my advice on a publisher who contacted him about re-publishing a book. I had never heard of the publisher, but there are many small publishers I’ve never heard of because in the past few years new […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...
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Published on February 12, 2018 16:06

February 5, 2018

7 Book Marketing Myths You Should Forget About

7 Book Marketing Myths You Should Forget About From Rick: Last week, I did an intro to marketing basics. This week, we have a guest post by Jordan Ring, who has launched several books of his own and has learned by experience some of the ins and outs of marketing and promotion. We hope that […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...
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Published on February 05, 2018 16:37