A book was recommended to me. The premise was fun, but the author exhibited a writing tic that had me screaming and casting the book aside by Chapter 4. The prose was littered with somehow, somewhere, sometime, someone, and something. Someone tidied my study while I was at the museum. Is it really a mystery
I want to thank the person who recommended Building Great Sentences: How to write the kind of sentences you love to read by Brooks Landon, not because I have much positive to say about it but because now I know who to blame for a lot of copy editors’ bald spots where they’ve ripped out
This isn’t a Never Do This Shit post because movies are great for teaching a lot of general storytelling concepts. Many of film’s lessons about pacing, rising action, characterization, doling out exposition, the content of dialogue, and more can be directly applied to stories that are meant to be read rather than produced and watched.
Between a workshop I’m running anonymously for a writer who doesn’t write, Reddit writing subs, and a nepotism hire at my soulless corporate writing gig, I’m being besieged from all sides by mistreatment of supporting characters. I’m doing what I can to address specific abuses, but I’ll collect my general thoughts on the subject here.