Monica Wood in The Pocket Muse, gives examples of sentences with dangling modifiers that show amusing results. “Mary admired the dress I bought for her in a department store with puffed sleeves.” The store had puffed sleeves? “Sidetracked by the phone call, the stew boiled over and Ella blamed her chatty mother.” The phone call […]
Give Feelings a Chance to Act
I read somewhere to give life to abstractions by substituting concrete images that suggest the feeling. I’ve decided to put that advice into practice with every other chapter. The newest one I wrote in revising Chapter One again is about Hada. Instead of saying she felt guilty, I wrote: Guilt pinched at her heart […]