Worderella Writes

On Giving Feedback

So, as writers, we are expected to be the paragons of all that is writing and editing, yes? Goodness, I hope not. Many of us have the same trouble editing another’s work as we do our own. Here is an article by Rebecca Swift about how to give good feedback, whether you are a reader or a writer, editing your own work or a friend’s. She mentions how your mood can change your feedback, how feedback is an absolute must, and more. Take a gander, tell me what you think.

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Editing Tips

Tightening Up
You will probably find that the opening of your first draft has been more of a warming up exercise, a way of breaking yourself in gently to the often daunting task of filling that first blank page. Strangely, these initial efforts can persist through any number of drafts, and it’s only when you eliminate them and see that nothing’s been lost that you realise what has happened.

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Romance Writing Tips

A Fine Romance
It’s stating the obvious, but romance is vital to any romantic fiction and needs to be central to your story. You can mix in other themes and genres, such as a mystery to solve or a pointed commentary on modern living, but it’s the passion between two (or more!) people which takes precedence. Don’t short-change your readers by starting out with what appears to be a romance, but ends as a political thriller.

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On Writing Romance

Here is an interesting essay about writing romance that I found at the BBC - Get Writing website.

Writing Romantic Fiction
by Katie Fforde

A Broad Genre
The Brontës, Sophie Kinsella, Phillippa Gregory, Helen Fielding and Jane Austen - they all write or wrote romantic fiction. It’s a large and generous genre but while many books have a romantic element, they can’t all be classed as romantic fiction. For example, The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk has a wonderful thread of romance running through it, but the romantic aspect isn’t what the book is about.

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Keep Your Writing Sharp…By Reading A Lot

The following wonderful writing advice was found at Carrie’s Procrastinatory Outlet. Her original post is about why we, as writers, should analyze why we, as readers, decide to put a book down. This analysis should improve our writing and help us with our editing, is her main point. I decided to share her writing tips with you, but click the link above if you want to read the original blog post or start reading Carrie on a normal basis.

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Angela Booth’s Top 10 to Help You Write More

Top Ten Writing Tips to Help You Write More
- Angela Booth

Tip One: Pay attention to images
Your right brain thinks in images, and when you write, you translate images from your right brain into words. Usually this process happens so quickly that you’re unaware of it. If you can make this process conscious, you can goose up your own creativity. Stephen King calls this process “writing with the third eye — the eye of imagination and memory.”

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Writerisms

Writerisms and other Sins: A Writer’s Shortcut to Stronger Writing
Copyright © 1995 by C.J. Cherryh

Writerisms: overused and misused language. In more direct words: find ‘em, root ‘em out, and look at your prose without the underbrush.

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Four Writing Tips

I found these tips amusing and true, from imaginarycircus. Go to her post to see a couple humorous comments too:

1. By withholding information from your reader you do not create mystery and suspense. i.e. by saying that your character is hiding a heavy object in her skirt and then revealing it is a gun later–you probably are just annoying your reader. If you had simply said she had a gun in her skirt and was following a man that would create tension and pique curiosity. Vague is not interesting. Concrete details are. (There are always exceptions to these rules, I know.)

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Capturing the Setting

This is an article I found on the BBC - Get Writing website, written by Sue Chester. I took out the exercises and etc, focusing mainly on the content. If you’d like to see the original article, click here. It’s a pretty long article, so reader beware:

Setting Off
For the last few weeks I’ve been on a journey through the Caribbean. It was very cheap. Gabriel Garcia Marquez took me there personally for less than a tenner in Love in the Time of Cholera.

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