The craft of creating professional correspondence has as much to do with understanding the tone in which the letter is to be presented as in any other factor. A letter’s purpose can be diminished, misconstrued, or lost in total if the correspondence is not written with the desired inflection. If you are writing or editing for someone, to…
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Writing Tip For Serious Fiction Writers – The Prudent Use of Contractions to Create Fluent Dialogue
With an Ear for the Reader, Understand the Value of Contractions for Realism in Dialogue A major hindrance to realistic dialogue is the inability to recognize the value of contractions to enable fluency. Dialogue quickly becomes stilted due to the non-use of contractions, and the narrative tends to read like dissertation material or a legal brief. …
Four Authors of Classical Contemporary Literature Defined the Craft of Writing Perfect Prose
There are four aspects of the craft of writing that many who understand literature would argue have never been better addressed: Steinbeck’s perfection with dialogue, Faulkner’s depth of characterization, Hemingway’s precise narrative, and Fitzgerald’s palpable creation of mood. One of the quickest ways to appreciate John Steinbeck’s brilliance in the realm of dialogue is to…
Writing Better Fiction – Beware when Action does Not Constitute Movement
One of the most serious issues facing many writers is the ability to maintain the action throughout the narrative. Unfortunately, the mere creation of a dramatic occurrence does not guarantee plot movement
Finding an Agent For Your Novel – How a Query Letter Differs From a Synopsis
Query Letter Writing – a Daunting Dilemma Some years ago, to add to a discussion I was encouraging related to the nuances of query letter writing, a woman who had just received a contract for her first novel–and with Simon & Schuster no less–wrote me to lament how arduous she had found the task of…