That’s the question people perpetually ask writers.
“If you ask a writer who has heard that same question dozens of times,” novelist Elizabeth Peters said, “she may come back with some snappy answer like, ‘There’s a drugstore in North Dakota where I order mine.’”
“The only possible answer,” Peters said, “is ‘Everywhere.’ You don’t get ideas; you see them, recognize them, greet them … Continue reading
Readers don’t want filler.
“Vigorous writing is concise,” says William Strunk Jr. in his classic book The Elements of Style. “A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that … Continue reading
… including its clichés.
How well should you know your fiction genre? Well enough to know not only its expectations, but also its overused elements.
If you’re writing romance, you should be familiar enough with what others have published that you avoid like the plague the well-worn technique of having two potential love interests literally bump into each other.