Anne McCaffrey said, “Tell me a story! Because without a story, you are merely using words to prove you can string them together in logical sentences.” Wikipedia states, “Anne Inez McCaffrey was an American-born Irish writer, best known for the Dragonriders of Pern science fiction series. How many of you have read McCaffrey’s books?
Scrivener for Pantsers and Plotters?
As we organized the stories in my anthology, Written Across the Genres, my great assistant, Linda Todd, used Scrivener. I bought a copy, took a tutorial, and realized there are several other tutorials available. How to use Scrivener looked manageable as I watched the video, but I’ve procrastinated because of the time involved with the […]
Stacey Gustafson’s Book ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
If you are familiar with Stacey Gustafson’s humorous writing or have bought her book on Amazon, she would benefit from reviews made specifically tomorrow, September 8th, in the morning. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? is available in paperback and on Kindle. Her short stories have appeared in seven books in the NOT YOUR MOTHER’S BOOK series, […]
The Earthquakes in the Protagonist’s Ordinary World
Lisa Cron in Wired for Story on page 130, uses the analogy of earthquake fissures that lead to the big one in the life of the protagonist. The “first hairline crack and its resulting offshoots are like fault lines, running through the center of the protagonist’s world, undermining everything. As with an earthquake, the cracks […]
San Francisco Writing for Change Conference This Saturday
September 6th, the 6th San Francisco Writing for Change Conference will be held at the Unitarian Universalist Center, Geary @ Franklin from 8:15 to 5:30. The conference theme is “Changing the world one book at a time: writing fiction and nonfiction to make a difference.” The keynote speaker is Adam Hochschild, “Writing About a Changing […]
More on Misplaced Modifiers
My last post from Violet’s Vibes had examples of misplaced modifiers. Here a few more from Bonnie Trenga’s book, The Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier, a Writers Digest Book. She explains that since a modifier usually describes the nearest noun, when it ends up next to the wrong word, it becomes misplaced. Here are […]
Say that again
Misplaced modifiers sneak into our writing, but if we catch them, they’re good for laughs. Violet tells us about a mustache weighing 150 pounds, a chair tying its shoes, and a dog packing up for college.