Nothing New Under The Sun: The Origins of 5 Common Literary Allusions
Do you ever feel like you are reading the same things over and over again? Well, you are. Here are five familiar literary allusions explained.
Kill Those Modifiers!
The overuse of adjectives and adverbs can ruin sentences and flatten descriptive passages.
8 Words to Seek and Destroy in Your Writing
By Rob D. Young
8 frequently abused words or phrases that gum up your content. Stars of the show include "suddenly," "then," "is," "started," "very," "that," "like," and "in order to."
The Secret Lives Of Little Words
In:
Craft, Dialogue, Discourse Analysis, Grammar, Grammar, Linguistics, List, Phrases, Sociolinguistics, Verbs, Voice, Word Play
What's that word doing there? When it comes to spoken language, nothing is accidental. Linguists are working on finding meaning in every 'oh,' 'um,' 'well,' and 'okay.' The results might surprise you.
Art and the Aphorism
Love them or hate them, writers can learn a lot about sentence structure and wordplay by experimenting with the timeless artform of the aphorism.
Writing In Parallel
One of the biggest mistakes committed by both beginning and experienced writers is a failure to craft sentences that transmit information clearly, evenly, and with an emphasis on what’s important.
As I Lay Mostly Dying
The baddest of the prose villains, that one word that, when mis-used, can single-handedly wreck an entire page of fiction for me, if not the whole piece: As.
Nuts and Bolts: Using Choruses
In:
Phrases
This verbal repetition can create a beat of bland time that lets your story breathe, or it can refresh previous plot points and trigger strong emotions. Steal this natural aspect of spoken rhetoric to enliven your prose.
Utility Phrases: When All Words Fail
In:
Phrases
What does your character say when he doesn't know what to say? Utility phrases fill a beat of bland time, possibly framing a gesture, possibly allowing the reader to recover from a shock, all the while developing characterization.
