by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
I usually do all of my link sharing on
Sundays, but I thought what I’d do today is to share a couple of recent links
I’ve found helpful…and also share some posts that I find myself coming back to
often to re-read.
Porter Anderson in his Publishing
Perspectives column
last Tuesday, linked to a Tumblr
post by Fight Club writer Chuck Palahniuk. In it, Palahniuk pointed out that characters
who think can be dangerous. :) Thinking words need a bit of the show-don’t-tell
treatment. Palahniuk also tells why
solitude is bad for our characters. Check the links for more information.
I also came across another link I found
interesting yesterday, on a similar topic. Self-Editing
for Everyone Part 4: The Weakeners by Bridget McKenna. This post has a nice
list of filler words (and other types of pitfalls) to look out for in our
writing. I’m always careful here to note
that we don’t have to eliminate all of
these—but it’s helpful to go through our writing and see if we’re using these
words as crutches.
Here are some older posts that I
frequently refer to. I liked these posts because they offered something a
little different from most writing craft posts and because they got me
thinking. Other than that…the posts have
very little in common.
The
one subplot you really need by Allen Palmer for Cracking Yarns.
6
Secrets to Creating and Sustaining Suspense by Steven James for Writer’s Digest
Five
More Ways to Add Humor by Darcy
Pattison for Fiction Notes.
Acting Out (a
technique for breaking acts and then adding twists, plot direction) by Lilla Zuckerman for Save the Cat!
How
to Build a Scene, Addendum: Do You Have a Surface Conflict and a Suppressed
Conflict? By Matt Bird for Cockeyed Caravan
Story
Threads—Tie the Elements Together by Beth Hill for The Editor’s Blog
A
Clever Way To Give A Story Hidden Depth by John Yeoman for Procrastinating Writers.
One
key to handling exposition by Scott
Myers for Go Into the Story.
Logline Library compiled for
The Script Lab. I somehow find this site fascinating
(probably says a lot about my state of mind.) I love seeing complex stories
being successfully reduced to a few words.
Plot
Generators, What-If Tools, 37 Dramatic Situations, and Getting Past Writers
Block. A nice post by Martina
A. Boone (Adventures in YA Publishing) for The Enchanted Inkpot.
What do you do with favorite posts that
you want to refer back to? I use the
free version of Evernote to organize my
favorite tips. I usually do a pass
through them right before editing or when I feel a bit stuck. The important
thing, I think, is not to get immobilized by all the good ideas—but to have
them there as reference when we need them.
And I’ve got to plug Mike Fleming’s and
my search engine…if you don’t want to bookmark and you’d rather search a topic
when you need it, you can pull up all the posts I’ve shared on writerskb.com . It’s free.
Have you got favorite posts? How do you
organize them?