by Joe Bunting |
I’m sure you’re familiar with the game Telephone? A group of people get in a circle, and one person comes with a silly phrase like, “The Orange Monkey Eats Green Bananas.” Then, the phrase is whispered from one person to the other around the circle. Each person can only say the phrase once and the listener can’t ask clarifying questions, like, “Did you mean Orange Monkey or Oral Moon Sea?” When the last person has to repeat the phrase, it’s inevitably ridiculous, usually something like, “The Horrible Pokemon Seats Green Cabanas.”
People mishear things all the time, and the game telephone proves it. When something is misheard, the resulting word or phrase is called a mondegreen.
by Emily Wenstrom |
Even when you ask for it, when people critique your writing it can feel like a dagger to the gut. It can knock out your confidence and even cause you to question whether you should ever bother picking up a pen again.
by Liz Bureman |
I’m just going to say it. Stephenie Meyer is not a good writer. Cue the defensive comments below.
I’m not talking about her storytelling. Like I said, I haven’t read the books. I don’t know how Stephenie (good lord, all those e’s) puts together her paragraphs to form a cohesive narrative. I’ve only read excerpts. But you know what? You don’t need to know the storyline to critique poor sentence structure.
Here are my three arguments against Twilight.
by Emily Wenstrom |
As writers, we spend a lot of time alone, pouring our hearts onto the page. But if we want to produce the very best work that you can, this isn’t enough. To truly make our work the best it can be, we need fresh eyes. We need to show our work to others willing to pick up that loathed red pen and critique our writing.
by The Magic Violinist |
There are all kinds of words that seem to pop up in your story while you’re writing the first draft. They can make your writing sloppy, cause confusion, and take up space, sometimes all at once. Some call them “filler words,” others “weasel words,” or any other variation of the term. I think we can all agree, though, that these words are tricky and must be destroyed. But how do you identify these words?
by Monica M. Clark |
Improve your metaphors and similes with this simple tip.
