Have you been asked to critique someone’s story? Been given a short story, screenplay or novel to discuss and have no idea where to start? Fear not. This is a guide to giving good feedback on creative writing. It explains how to deliver your critique and the key questions you should answer. As a reader, it will make you very popular with your writer friends. As a writer, the crib-sheet for reader questions will help you edit your own work.
It may also improve your love life. I’m not even joking. Ready?
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I just finished the second full draft of a novel. I’m going to take a couple of weeks of for Christmas, then get started on the third. But the titles “second” and “third” don’t refer to a number of revisions (I have worked through each chapter many, any times). Rather they refer to specific stages in the drafting process. In this article I will describe what I mean by a second and a third draft, and illustrate my personal checklist for revising third drafts. How do you turn a rough draft into a ready draft?
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Let’s talk about sex.
Who we are and how we feel about things drives what we write. Narrative perspective isn’t just about character point of view and verb construction, it’s about the author sees the world.
This is particularly important when we write about gender and sex. Our sexuality can empower our stories, creating vibrancy, passion and authenticity. But it can also lead to bad writing, dreadful stereotypes and hackneyed characterisation.
To show you what I mean I’m going to share a series of my own drawings, based on images from Frank Miller’s marvellous Sin City graphic novels. I will use them to demonstrate a technique that will help you to shake up your own biases, and energise your stories and characters.
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English is a subject/object structured language. A normal English sentence goes like this: Subject -> Action -> Object. But, because English is a wonderfully flexible language, we are allowed to re-order our sentences. We can hide both subject and object within subtle layers of meaning. So how do you choose your sentence structure? And why have years of academic writing left me struggling with my fiction edit?
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This is the final part of my 5-part beginner’s guide to musical writing. How can we use sound and rhythm to create beautiful writing? So far I’ve explored the use of stress and sound to create patterns and rhythm, both in individual phrases and then how to draw it together to produce cadence in a scene. In this final part I’m going to bite the bullet and try to give an example of how to take a bare bones scene and make it musical. I’m not promising great writing (would that I could). But you should be able to see the musical process in action, and then steal it and do something better. Good luck!
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Have you been asked to critique someone’s story? Been given a short story, screenplay or novel to discuss and have no idea where to start? Fear not. This is a guide to giving good feedback on creative writing. It explains how to deliver your critique and the key questions you should answer. As a reader, it will make you very popular with your writer friends. As a writer, the crib-sheet for reader questions will help you edit your own work.
