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.
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Should You Ever Write for Free?
You hope to write professionally, which means getting paid for what you write. So should you ever write for free?
I sure hope so.
Disclaimer: I’ve worked for a publication that paid writers well. I’ve worked for a company that paid a token amount (for one-time rights for blog material.) But now I work for an all-volunteer organization … Continue reading