ADVICE ON WRITING
The Fifth Key: Confidence
Writing students often ask about style and study other writers’ work to try to win for themselves this elusive quality. But style is gained through confidence.
And confidence is the child of courage.
The courage to tell your own truth, in your own words.
Twenty years of writing, and working with other writers, has convinced me that the […]
The Fourth Key: Brevity
By Orna Ross.
Short words, short sentences, short paragraphs, short books. Sometimes you have to “go long” (I’m speaking as someone whose last two books ran to 600+ pages) — but unless you have a reason, keep it short.
The Third Key: Unity
By Orna Ross
In the first draft, we accept all ideas and understandings as they emerge, no matter how vague or disconnected. Then we trim and tidy these strands into a coherent, interconnected whole.
Whether the piece runs to 500 or 500,000 words, we ensure that idea, sense, tone and style work together and are consistent […]
The Second Key: Accuracy
By Orna Ross
The Key of Accuracy turns in two different ways, depending on whether you are in the drafting phase, or in the later redrafting or editing phases.
During first draft, ask yourself…
…How can I help the reader to SEE more clearly… what is happening and where?
…How can I help the reader to HEAR more clearly… […]
The First Key: Clarity
By Orna Ross.
In school, our English teachers told us to have a beginning, a middle and an end and to write out our points in advance. This is clarity imposed from the outside.
The creative writer, of fiction or non-fiction, clarifies a piece of writing in a different, more organic, way.
First, we let a first draft […]
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