Liz here! Greetings from the Lone Star State! I’m taking a week off work and spending it in Houston and Austin visiting some dear friends. In honor of this trip, we’re taking a detour off our regular defined path of grammatical bliss.
We should all know by now how important spelling and grammar and punctuation are for a writer. There is an exception, however: writing with a dialect. Since I’m in Texas, let’s take a trip down the southern-accent highway.
If you critique other writers work, your own writing improves. Everyone knows that.
But can critiquing make you a better person?
In my experience, it can!
If your writing seems a little dull, tap into this easy trick—focus on the verbs. Using direct, precise, and active verbs instantly makes your writing stronger.
These verbs move your story forward, create powerful imagery, and convey a confident tone.
ou’ve been told over and over that we writers must read to improve our craft. Over at the Write to Publish course, we’ve been practicing critiquing. I’ve learned writers can’t just read, we must critique!
Writers often waste words rather than perfecting their prose.
A simile, as our fourth-grade English teachers intoned, is a comparison of two, usually dissimilar, objects, with the use of “like” or “as.” To enliven our writing, similes can evoke the particular sense we want to transmit. Many of our most now-trite similes were fresh when first used—Burns’ “my love is like a red, red rose,” Shakespeare’s “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” But repetition and endless assignment in freshman English classes has made them as shopworn as the bargain table after a sale.