You’re getting ready to write your novel or memoir. How do you decide which tense you should use: past or present? In the case of a novel, you also need to decide whether to write in first person or third. These are common dilemmas and ones worth exploring, because selecting the right tense and point of view from the start will save you getting stuck part-way into the writing, unable to make that choice work for the remainder of your story.
Read MoreDo You Torture Your Metaphors? The Problem of Self-Conscious Writing
Do you torture your metaphors, linking unlike things in outrageous comparisons? Do you manufacture odd phrases and invent “words” in an attempt to seem “literary” and “sound like a writer”? If so, you probably don’t even know you are doing this, yet the pretentious writing that results is one of the marks of an amateur writer.
Read MoreThe Flattery of Friends Doth Not a Writer Make
Why Word Count Matters
Horror or Thriller? Don’t Muddle the Genres
The emotional territory of a thriller is courage. Horror, by contrast, stakes its claim in the emotional territory of fear. The two genres, correctly written, are as different as day and night …
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