Laurel Garver's Blog, page 34

Close, but no cigar: using then and than, lose and loose

It's Phonics Friday once again, and today I'm addressing two pairs of words a reader asked me to discuss. These pairs perplexed me a bit, because they aren't actually homophones. They should not be pronounced the same.

If you're currently doing so, then you have what my former choir director would call "an annunciation problem." Chances are your speech has become a bit mushy, like the speakers around you. Linguists call these regional speech patterns dialect. Since we learn to speak a language...

Using colour to accentuate theme by Jessica Bell

I'm delighted to have special guest Jessica Bell here to talk about how she develops and uses colors symbolically in her work. I love this of this sort of leitmotif in fiction, especially after doing a grad school paper on color motifs in Willa Cather's fiction. USING COLOUR TO ACCENTUATE THEMEby Jessica Bell
I like to use the symbolism of colour to strengthen a common theme(s) I want to explore in my writing. I am fascinated by symbolic references in the books I read too (even if they do not...

The lead or the law? Principal and principle

It's Phonics Friday once again, and I'm here to tackle a pair of homophones I've frequently seen mixed up, even in published books and newspapers--and on a billboard once, as well. Let's take a look at definitions, visuals, examples, and mnemonics to get the words clear in our heads. Because spell-check will not help you.

Principal photo by Animal, morguefile.comadj. -- most important, influential or consequential.

n. -- person in the lead position of authority; chief; lead performer o...

Moving forward in the face of criticism

Putting ourselves out there to be evaluated by others--whether it's for critique partners or blog readers or agents and editors or the reading public--will involve risk every time. We may get all negative feedback, all positive or a mixed bag. Any of these scenarios has the power to eviscerate our productivity, though. In The War of Art, Steven Pressfield offers this wisdom for keeping forward movement and using criticism well:

The professional loves her work. She is invested in it wholeh...

Secret or separate? Discreet and Discrete

It's Friday Phonics time, and today we will be tackling the homophone pair discreet and discrete. Mixing up these two higher-level vocabulary words is something I've seen in both beginner and scholarly, PhD-level writing. Once again, spell check will not help you.

The more commonly used term is the double E version, having to do with secret-keeping. Let's take a look at definitions, visuals, examples and mnemonics to get the words clear in our heads.
Discreet © carulmare, Flickr; Rembrandt. 1661...

Tips for avoiding the dreaded label "purple prose"

Today is my final installment of my series on "Reducing Bloat / Revising Overwriting."

Overly elaborate diction is what most think of when they hear the term "overwriting." I'd argue it's just one facet of a tendency to go thick, lush and heavy-handed when drafting. The trick is to identify and correct it during revision.

Advanced vocabulary
Your characters' word choices show us who they are, so it's important to be accurate. Generally word choices should be consistent with a character's age, le...

The ties that bind: adhesive in conflict

Conflict should be at the core of what drives a story forward. Ah, but here's the rub: being conflict-averse and passive aggressive is far more common in real life than shouting matches, car chases and fisticuffs. Given the choice, most will flee from conflict rather than stay locked in it.

Unless there's glue.

In Plot and Structure, James Scott Bell gives one of the better explanations for this aspect of characterization he calls "adhesive." He defines it as "any strong relationship or circums...

Three tips for streamlining dialogue

In my ongoing series on reducing bloat (aka revising "overwriting"), we've looked at eliminating tangents and sentence-level wordiness. Today, we'll look at "sins of the tongue"--that is, types of overwriting that crop up in dialogue.

Softening phrasesIndirectness can be an effective way of showing a character’s non-confrontational nature or anxiety or indecision. Or it can simply be your anxiety appearing on the page. Take care to limit how many softening phrases you use.

Some c...

How to rein in tangents: four tips

In my series on reducing bloat (aka revising an overwritten manuscript), today we'll be tackling tangents, a term you might associate with geometry. My MC Danielle, an gifted artist, struggles terribly with geometry in particular and with numbers generally. When she initially signed up for classes, she was sure shape-related math would be breeze-easy for her arty brain.

See, friends? This is how tangents worm their way into your work. It's exceedingly easy for one thought to trigger another, u...

Reducing bloat: simple strategies

Many of you are revising NaNo projects and have discovered that your eagerness to hit word counts led you to create a whole lot of bloated prose. Some of the problem might be tangents, some of it letting characters babble. I'll address these issues in future posts.

Today, I'd like to address some common, sentence-level causes of wordiness. Many of these things are not grammatically incorrect and some may have a place in your writing. Just keep in mind that wordy constructions usually reduce cl...