Natasha Deen's Blog, page 97

Tuesday Technique: Best-Selling Mentors

Sometimes I hear writers wish that they had a NY Times best-selling author…here's a simple fix for that wish: buy their books and study their writing. Everything you ever need to know about how they write/plot/characterize is found in their writing.

Wish you had their style? Then copy out five pages of the book. By page five, you'll get a really great sense of how they pace and how they use their words.

Mechanical Monday: Misplaced Modifiers

First of all, what's a modifier?  Basically it's a word or phrase that describes what you're talking about (the grown-up/technical definition: it's an adverb, adjective, phrase, or clause that acts as a modifier (but I don't like it when you use the word you're defining in the definition)).

A misplaced modifier is when you put the word in the wrong spot and thus describe the wrong thing:

Wrong: The students were told their test would only cover cosmetology by their teacher.

Right: The...

The Grand Writing Experiment: Writing Forward

I was watching an interview with Stephen King where he said (I'm totally paraphrasing and editorializing here) that the difference between the typewriter and word processor was that with a typewriter, you can't go back (re: editing), only forward.

And that has started the Grand Writing Experiment. I'm writing forward. No editing, no erasing or tweaking, straight "start at page one and don't stop until 'the end.'"  Not sure if it'll work, but I've got a month to see…

Friday Freebie: Crest Needs to do the Math

In an ad for Crest Tartar control, they show twin girls who are exactly alike—except one has tartar and the other doesn't. The ad asks: "how can this happen?" The narrator goes on to say, "Because MORE than 1 in 2 people have tartar."

Okay, now y'all know I'm no queen of math, but in a group of TWO people, it seems saying "more than one" is to say "both" which is to say "all of them."  I mean, what is Crest saying? One woman is pregnant, which is why it's "More than 1" but "less than two?"

...

Thursday Time: Finding Motivation

We all have the same problem: keeping momentum and motivation with our writing.  Here's two methods that might work:

Find an organization you LOATHE. Write a cheque to them, stick it in an envelope and address it. Then, give it to a friend with the STRICT instruction: "If I don't meet my writing goal, mail this." (this tip, courtesy of playwright Connie Massing). Team up with a friend, set a money limit (me and my friends use a max. of $5). If you meet your goal, your friend buys you...

Join me at inkPulse!

For registration and more information, head to: http://www.writersguild.ab.ca/inkPulse.asp

Wednesday Whoa/Woe: Watching the Cues

G.T. and I were watching a show the other day and one of the characters (call him Hank) brings his son to work. As soon as that happened, I said to my husband, "That's it. He's going to die."

"What? Why?"

"The writers introduced us to his son and the guy works a dangerous job. Trust me, Hank's dead."

Sure enough, by the end of the show, the character was died and the son left alone.

So, is this necessarily a "woe/whoa" moment?  Meh.  Who knows? As writers, we have to show the cost to...

Technique Tuesday: The Writing Senses

There are seven (yep, SEVEN) senses you want to bring into your writing:

Touch Taste Sight Smell Sound Emotion Humour

When you're editing your first draft, take a look at your scenes and see if you can pull in these senses (not all of them, all at once).  You'll deepen the writing and ground the reader in the story.

Monday Mechanics: "ing" words

Ah, the "ing" word: taking, shooting, sleeping…truly any word can be an "ing" word and that's a good thing. If something starts happening while I'm sleeping, I want to know.

When do we need to watch our "ing"? 

When it's accompanied by "was."  So, if I "was sleeping" when something happened and now my sleep's been interrupted, that's fine. But if I was feeling sad and just wanted to go home, then I could be in passive voice. So, "I was feeling sad, so I went home." can become...

All the Proof I Need: Why I Work with Children

One of the things that really, really makes me want to vomit is when some smug adult says in a totally self-satisfied tone that children today are lazy. Or stupid. Or they don't care about anything but Nintendo. Or they don't read or write.*

I'm not sure what child these adults know (and my snotty, immature response is to say they musn't know any children a'tall) because I've never met a stupid kid. Or a lazy one. Or one that, if you took the time to listen to what they wanted to read or...