by Zoe M. McCarthy | Jul 24, 2014 | Creating, Writing
“If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.” —Orson Welles In an earlier post, I talked about backloading sentences, paragraphs, and scenes. Meaningful words at the end of these leave the reader with what’s important. And...
by Zoe M. McCarthy | Jul 17, 2014 | Writing
“Well, the thing about great fictional characters from literature, and the reason that they’re constantly turned into characters in movies, is that they completely speak to what makes people human.” —Keira Knightley I have a surly character in my inspirational...
by Zoe M. McCarthy | Jul 3, 2014 | Writing
“Paragraphs help readers make sense of the thousands of pieces of information a writer folds into a story.” —Beth Hill Does your editor or critique partner often suggest breaking up your paragraphs? After researching online articles, I found: Tweetable One...
by Zoe M. McCarthy | Jun 26, 2014 | Writing
“A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.” —William Strunk, Jr. Show, don’t tell, is pounded into the pores of...
by Zoe M. McCarthy | Jun 12, 2014 | Writing
“That’s what agents and acquisition editors are looking for–something they don’t want to put down.” —Ray Rhamey Writers are told to end each chapter with a cliffhanger that keeps the reader from inserting a bookmark and going to sleep. Tweetable Would a chapter...
RSS - Posts