Les Hallucinations Du Baron De Münchhausen (1911)

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How to Improve your Writing

Rick Riordan's Writing Tips

Rick Riordan:

Taste is subjective, and opinions differ about what "good writing" looks like. Most of us have read a bestseller or two and wondered, "How did this thing get published?" Nevertheless, I would argue that most work does not get published unless it demonstrates a certain level of technical competence. The grammar is correct. The prose is readable. I would further argue that most manuscripts are rejected because the writing is not technically competent. The manuscript never stands a chance because the writer simply doesn't know the craft of writing well enough. If you write well, you have already set yourself apart from 99% of what agents and editors see every day. Below are some notes on what I call "sentence level competence" — the ability to craft prose at the most basic level. These tips reflect the most common problems I've observed in unpublished manuscripts.

Sentence-Level Competence

Sentence focus — the subjects of all clauses should be appropriate to the content of the sentence.

Favor the concrete over the abstract, the antecedent over the pronoun.

Example: It was a sunny day. (the subject "it" is boring and vague.)

Better: The sky was brilliant blue. (Here the subject is sky, which is what the sentence was supposed to be about.)

If you are writing a sentence about a guy named Fred, the subject in the sentence should be (surprise!) Fred.

Exercise

Go through a page of prose and underline your own subjects.

How many are abstract?

How many of your sentences are truly focused?

Modifiers

Be sure the modifier refers to the right thing.

The modifier should refer to the closest noun.

Confusing modifiers will trip up the reader, consciously or subconsciously.

By the same token, pronouns should have clear antecedents.

Always place the modifier as close to the subject as possible.

Example: Can you help other writers who are writing books like me? (I got this question recently. I understand what the person is saying, but 'like me' follows the word 'books' so he is implying, without meaning to, that there are people producing books that look like him.)

Better: Can you help other writers like me who are writing books?

Exercise

Color-code a page of your manuscript, making each phrase and clause a different color.

Match up dependent clauses and phrases with their modifiers.

Avoid getting your modifier too far away from the thing being modified.

Deft Description

Choose your details carefully.

A description should be vivid, but surgically precise.

The detail must be given for a reason, and have a logical connection to the plot or advancement of character.

Avoid long "grocery lists" of details.

For a paragraph-length description, offer a uniting theme — an extended metaphor — to give the details cohesion.

Example: He was six feet tall, three hundred pounds, with brown hair, small brown eyes, a big nose and big fists. He wore jeans and a muscle shirt. He looked angry. (this is way too much description for the reader to keep track of, and it is offered as a random list)

Better: He looked like a rhino, ready to charge. (then you can pick a few details that reinforce the image of a rhino)

Exercise

Go through a chapter and delete all adjectives and adverbs.

Read through, then add some back in sparingly.

You may find you can do with less than before.

Parallelism

Clauses or phrases that are part of a list should be similar in structure.

Unparallel constructions are awkward and difficult to read, even if the reader can't put her finger on the exact problem.

Example: He likes dogs, hiking in the woods and reads books a lot. (Dogs is a single noun, hiking in the woods is a participial phrase, reads books a lot is a simple predicate. These are all totally different things. Make them the same, and the sentence will flow much better.)

Better: He likes walking his dog, hiking in the woods, and reading lots of books.

Exercise

Try constructing your descriptions in parallel units — absolutes, infinitives, adjectives.

Source

Gidelim buradan koş enis koş. kaçıp gidelim bu çağdan zira bu toprak seni de beni de bağrımızdan yutar..

I fucking loved Nosferatu. The Death and the Maiden imagery, how faithful it was to the original FW Murnau piece (including some of the recreations of iconic scenes), all the ‘Little Deaths’ and how FINALLY there’s some gnarly vampire erotica that doesn’t feature the vampire as some glazed twink, and has him as a rotten old corpse instead. Loved the Romanian dialogue. Loved that gruesome death scene, and the final frame was a fucking work of art.

Unfortunately it makes me so frustrated that not everybody will get it or understand it and why it’s so good. Everyone I’ve spoken to about it were too preoccupied with “all the weird moaning” and laughing at the full frontal vampire cock.

Meanwhile I’m sat there trying to explain vampire folklore and their cultural history, documents of ‘real’ vampirism, their symbolism and roots in xenophobia and antisemitism, blood libel, the manifestations of demons as personifications of shame and desire, Bram Stoker’s possible closeted homosexuality and his ties with Oscar Wilde and how Dracula was published around the same time Wilde was imprisoned, the ‘bohemian’ movement in the victorian period and how it simultaneously romanticised, fetishised and demonised Romani culture, la petit mort and necrophilia and how grief, sex and death are intertwined, the science behind why humans both are attracted to and repelled by the smell of indole, why funerals make people hungry/horny, the Victorian Christianity perspective on blood transfusions, the significance of blood as a ritualistic symbol and device throughout mythology and history, mental illnesses and medical conditions connected to vampirism and other vampiric folkloric creatures like the Nachzehrer and the Gwrach y Rhibyn whilst everyone looks at me like I’ve grown five heads

And honestly? I’ve never kinned Dr Van Helsing more in my life than at that exact moment.

By all means, take me to the cinema to watch a piece of vampire media but do not expect to win an argument concerning vampires against me because I can and will put you on your arse. This is my domain, my special interest.

I have two schools of thought for the three meals of the day and their labelling.

1 - the specific time of consumption ie morning, noon, and night, corresponds with the label. Eat random food in the morning period? That’s breakfast. Eat random food at night? That’s dinner. Etc.

2 - the order of consumption is the indicator for the label. The first food eaten of the day is breakfast, the second lunch, the third dinner, and the cycle repeats come midnight.

Which do you prescribe to? Or do you have a different thought?

Money money money

KING LINDWORM (FULL comic)

The shepherd’s daughter is newly wedded to a deadly Lindworm…

People should use this text embellishment more

𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟

Source details and larger version.

Howl at my collection of vintage wolf imagery.

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No more nightmares, best sleep of Harrys life

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