graceless-writing
Graceless Writing
Sharnee Grace | 23 | Australian | A blog for all things writing
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Just learned about garden path sentences.
They’re basically a literary prank– the sentence starts out in such a way that you think you know where it’s going, but the way it ends completely changes the meaning while still being a complete and logical sentence. Usually it deals with double meanings, or with words that can be multiple parts of speech, like nouns and verbs or nouns and adjectives.
So we get gems like
The old man the boat. (The old people are manning the boat)
The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families. (The apartment complex is home to both married and single soldiers, plus their families)
The prime number few. (People who are excellent are few in number.)
The cotton clothing is usually made of grows in Mississipi. (The cotton that clothing is made of)
The man who hunts ducks out on weekends. (As in he ducks out of his responsibilities)
We painted the wall with cracks. (The cracked wall is the one that was pained.)
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i want to coin a phrase that's the opposite of writer's block. call it the muse's fire hydrant. thirty thousand story ideas are being beamed directly into your brain and if you don't write them all at once you will die.
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After careful consideration and going over multiple options I think the best choice is stay warm and cozy in bed forever.
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Words to Limit in your Final Draft
(None of this advice really applies to dialogue. If it’s in your character’s voice, they can use whatever words they like!)
Suddenly
This one usually makes people’s list for things to cut. “Suddenly, the door opened.” Turns into, “The door slammed open.”
As always, we want to make the readers think wow that was sudden! Instead of just telling them so.
Saw/Heard + Felt
I already explained this in my post here!
Seemed
There’s a use for seemed in writing when your character is surprised, assuming, or guessing at something. “It seemed impossible.” “The noise seemed to travel for miles.” Etc.
However, when guessing at someone’s emotions—or a group of people—it’s better to just describe what those people look like. So “He seemed happy” turns into, “he grinned, bouncing on his feet.”
Really/Very
Instead of “The really big house” try, “the huge house.” Or “His hair was very dark.” Turns into “His hair was inky black.”
That
If you can take ‘that’ out of a sentence, it usually is stronger than if you don’t. “It was the best cake that she’d ever had!” turns into “It was the best cake she’d ever had!” It reads a bit less clunky.
Then
Then can be used sometimes, but it’s one of those words that’s easy to overuse. To cut out a lot of your ‘thens’ you can replace them with “and” such as, “He left the house, then got into the car.” Turns into, “He left the house and got into the car.”
Down/Up
“He sat down” is redundant. “He sat” means the same thing. Same with “She stood up.”
I chose the ones I find the most important, but there’s tons of other words that can be unnecessary or bog down your prose. Let me know which ones I missed! Good luck!
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*Takes you by the shoulders* I ADORE character profiles and character trivia and likes and dislikes sections. I love knowing this ruthless, heartless, cruel man of a character has a childish dislike for mandarin oranges. I believe in the inherent beauty of all characters, no matter the background or moral stance, being made fundamentally human by assigning them insignificant culinary preferences. I stand by the supremacy of humanizing villains by giving them relatable tastes and trivial interests and ordinary hobbies. I treasure the hidden reminders that everyone is inherently human even when everything else we know about a character might suggest the contrary.
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u ever in such a bad mood u feel urself turning evil?
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Person: So what inspired the romantic pairings in your WIP? Why did you choose to put those specific characters together?
Me:
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every artist ever : woops I've hallucinated this thing in such excruciating details I now can't put it down on paper satisfactorily
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writing is the most insane hobby it's like,
is it easy? no
is it fast? also no
but is it fun? well,
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best trope is the one where the character’s godlike power is also killing them btw. they don’t even lift a hand to kill the monster but now they’re delirious with fever. they save a friend’s life and said friend immediately finds them emergency medical care. they raze the enemy to nothing and it takes far too long to find their pulse with all the bruising. their friends just constantly having to patch them up and worrying over which feat will be their last. et cetera
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