Tag Archives: writing help

advice

Paradigm: The Best One-Sentence Advice All Week

I’ve just discovered Paradigm: The Online Writing Assistant. What a great site! It’s chock full of excellent writing help for new and intermediate writers, including the most helpful one-sentence quote I’ve found in decades:

“Focus on the sentence.”

If more writers would obsess over an individual line until it shines, they would find problem areas such as passive voice and subject/object confusion becoming a thing of the past. If your editor constantly gripes at you for putting “will be” lines in your copy or if you wrestle with past and present tense in your writing, check out Paradigm.

Even if you think your prose is dead sexy, have a look at this site and you may just discover some kind of tweak that can make your work even better.

advice

Five Simple Ways to Instantly Improve Your Writing

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Want to improve your writing damn near instantly? There are many bad habits we all fall into (see my blog entries here for plenty of examples) that can be excised with a little effort and concentration.

I catch myself paying much more attention to these when I edit other people, but also when I am writing queries to high-value publications. I try to be compulsive about these with any communication with people who might be sending me checks, but especially so with the big ones. Check out my top five and watch your copy tighten up like magic.

5. Eliminate “that”, “and then”, “such as” wherever possible. You should also drop the word “and” in favor of commas where appropriate. Sometimes this rule won’t apply; where it does the line flows much better.

4. Use contractions where acceptable for more conversational writing. Avoid contractions in formal writing where you need a slightly more stuffy, authoritative tone.

3. Eliminate commas where one descriptor will do. Why write “The sleek, slim design…” unless you are trying to differentiate between something that is sleek and wide? When you need to do a comparison, keep the appropriate descriptors.

2. Lose “ly” endings where you can. There is an especially heinous example in an old Depeche Mode song where something “passes undectedly…” Um, WHAT? It can “pass undetected” instead. There’s no reason to write “The monkeys are readily available for parties.” You can just write “The monkeys are available for parties.”

1. Edit out the meaningless parts of a phrase. There is no such thing as “mentally insane,” a “bogus fake” or a “mental telepathy”. There’s just fake, insane, and telepathy. The same rules apply to the ‘vicious beating’. Unless you can conjure up a “pleasant beating,” dump the adjective and move on.

advice, editorial

Joe Wallace’s Top Ten Rules of Writing

Egotistical of me to put my own name in the headline, I know, but I’m competing with Robert’s Rules of Order and Strunk & White here, so why not? This is my current top ten of the moment–many of which I’ve been doling out to people who I edit or mentor in the craft. Rest assured, I break at least two of these in this very blog post, but then again, I am not submitting this to an editor for money.

10. For informal writing like advice columns, blogging or CD reviews, write like you talk–unless you talk like an idiot.

9. Never use a word you don’t fully understand. Do you KNOW what “avuncular” means? Or the actual meaning of the word “hopefully”? Look it up first.

8. If you don’t know specifically when it is appropriate to use an apostrophe, DON’T. Spell out “it is” and “there is” instead.

7. If you don’t know the difference between “they’re”, “their”, and “there”, quit writing until you do. You’re making an idiot out of yourself.

6. If you refuse to write “modicum” when “a small amount” will do, GOOD FOR YOU.

5. Never use jargon if you don’t understand the full meaning. What is the difference between an aircraft, an airframe or an air platform? Don’t know? Don’t use it.

4. The Pentagon cannot “say” ANYTHING. Neither can Isreal, Boeing, or the Clinton campaign. A spokesperson for any or all of these entities can say whatever he or she likes.

3. There is no such thing as a life-giving shooting spree, so why write about a “deadly” one?

2. Cut the crap. You don’t need to write “Well, let me tell you..” or “I bet there’s something you didn’t know” when “Let me tell you” and “There’s something you didn’t know” will do. Forget all “will be” and “going to” phrases. Just say what’s about to happen.

1. Read your work out loud before you declare it finished. You’ll discover that draft is NOT finished.

advice

Five Ways to Quickly Improve Your Writing

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How would you like to make a LOT more money from your writing? Let’s face it, you can put together a slam-bang query, get the editor’s attention and land the gig; if what you turn in doesn’t live up to the hype, you’re dead in the water with that editor for another assignment. Good freelancers are the ones who learn the value of establishing a relationship with your editor. The only way to do that is to get past the first assignment with a new publication. Editors hate nothing more than the writer who presents well because of a an agonized-over query letter, but didn’t live up to the promise with the completed article. You might not think you’re guilty, but if you aren’t doing at least two of these five steps, you could be cheating yourself out of more money.

Here are five ways you can attack your writing to make your editor appreciate your work:

1. Read Strunk and White before starting a new article. The eternal one-liner “Omit needless words” is only a single nugget of genius–The Elements of Style has the power to change your writing style in ways you can’t even imagine. Read the section on misused words and phrases and watch your copy change practically overnight.

2. Scour your copy for “garbage words”. Garbage words include therefore, occasionally, and so forth, hopefully, and extremely. We know the crash was horrific. It’s overkill to say “extremely horrific”. Strong writing does not need these things. I just heard a character on a television show say someone was “extremely dead,” and if you REALLY need an explanation why that is poor writing (when said without irony), I suggest you go back to Strunk & White and read some more.

3. Omit statements when questions are more concise. Let’s consider the dilemma of the radio advertising writer. Here is someone who needs to convey a large amount of information, but only has 30 seconds to do it. Instead of writing “People looking for used automobiles should check out Uncle Harry’s Used Car Lot,” a good radio ad will ask “Are you looking for a used car? Try Harry’s Used Car Lot”. To put this in article context, consider the following statement: “20 million consumers purchased at least two handguns in 2002 because of fears over high profile crimes such as murder and bank robberies.” Continue reading Five Ways to Quickly Improve Your Writing →