In an earlier post (Got Five Minutes?), I suggested that a quick revision of a single sentence can be a good exercise in clarifying the first thoughts we put down on paper or screen. The difficulty many of us have in moving from mind-work to word-work—I know what I want to say, but I just …
Author Archives: rultimo
Got Five Minutes?
Read and Revise One Sentence
In the study of music, an étude is a short composition written to practice technique. Musicians play études to exercise their skill and improve their proficiency. Writers can do something similar by revising one short sentence for a few minutes over and over, knowingly changing structure and design to see the different effects that result. …
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Read and Revise One Sentence”
The Voice Behind the Words
The term written voice refers in writing instruction to the personality a writer presents through the wording, phrasing, and construction of the language we are reading. I say personality deliberately, because it is not so much a question of knowing who the author is in actual, personal detail, but rather of discerning another human being …
A Single Comma
It is not entirely correct to talk about theory being one thing and practice another. It’s closer to the truth to say that theory and practice are two sides of the same coin, obverse and reverse, complementing each other in whatever we do. Which would mean that to study the theory of grammar is inevitably …
The Images in Fiction
Someone once told me that he didn’t like reading fiction because it wasn’t true. Now it’s true that fiction isn’t true, but what is imaginary is not necessarily meaningless. Reading fiction can do a lot for us, but one especially great thing it can do for us as writers is exercise our skill in image-making. …