Recently I was proofreading a novel draft of mine, and I came across this sentence: Anne advanced; he retreated; she cornered him against a wall and pounded his shoulders. Now, I love me some semicolons, so it’s no surprise that I would somehow manage to get two into a single sentence in the first fiveContinue reading “Punctuation and Visual Rhythm”
Tag Archives: heuristics
How To Decide To Cut A Scene: A Heuristic for Writers
Almost every fiction writer has heard “kill your darlings” and “show don’t tell.” These pithy sayings get repeated so much that they lose a lot of meaning and they’re frankly a little annoying, because they don’t really help writers know when to kill darlings, or which darlings to kill, or what to show and notContinue reading “How To Decide To Cut A Scene: A Heuristic for Writers”
Writing Rules and Genre
This semester I’m having my students write in a number of genres. That’s not a bad thing (actual results may vary…). But, as happens every semester, we’re struggling. We’re struggling because my class isn’t my students’ first exposure to writing (my students are adults–they’ve actually been writing for a LONG time, whether they realize itContinue reading “Writing Rules and Genre”
Dr. Cox's Desk 