Narrative Tense—Right Now or Way Back Then

There’s a lot of contention concerning narrative tense—should stories always be told using the past tense or is present tense a true option.

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Apparently some in the writing community think semicolons have no place in fiction. But all punctuation has a purpose and can be put to use in novels and short stories.

Continue reading Punctuation in Fiction—Are There Prohibitions? »

Punctuation can overwhelm a sentence or paragraph. Poor punctuation can be a distraction, pulling readers out of the fiction and out of the mood to read your work. Let words tell the story. Use punctuation for other purposes.

Continue reading Use Words, Not Punctuation, To Tell Your Story »

Characters look phony and unreal, making fiction seem unreal, when writers give them concurrent actions that can’t possibly happen at the same time.

Continue reading Multi-Tasking Characters or Impossible Actions? »

The rules of grammar and punctuation are many; explore the importance of knowing how to use grammar and punctuation correctly.

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An absolute phrase is a modifier you might use in your writing, but one you might not have heard of. Learn the proper uses of absolute phrases, and give yourself one more tool for crafting creative sentences.

Continue reading Should I Use Absolute Phrases? Absolutely »

Single quotation marks don’t have many uses in American English. Learn when to use them and how to use double quotation marks and italics for emphasis.

Continue reading Single Quotation Marks—A Reader’s Question »

Can you combine dialogue for multiple readers in one paragraph? Learn what readers expect about dialogue and why it’s important to follow the rules.

Continue reading More Punctuation in Dialogue—A Reader’s Questions »

Some writing rules are not rules, certainly not rules that must be followed to craft understandable and engaging stories. Let’s look at some of the rules we can toss out.

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There’s much more to a paragraph than what you learned way back when. See what your paragraphs can and should be doing for your stories.

Continue reading Writing Basics—The Paragraph »