Letters Remain

Tag: writing

  • Blogs as Books and the ‘New’ Bias

    We are prejudiced against material that doesn’t identify itself as ‘New’ and this is a problem not just with the majority of online information consumers but also the websites that pander to this ‘old media’ bias. Whether something’s “new” or “breaking” is a concern for newspaper writers seeking scoops. There’s no reason on Earth a…

  • The Blog’s Influence on Writing

    Philip Greenspun on how writing and publishing has evolved since the Internet and, specifically, the blog have become omnipresent in our lives: Suppose that an idea merited 20 pages, no more and no less? A handful of long-copy magazines […] would print 20-page essays, but an author who wished his or her work to be…

  • Fiction-Writing Rules, from Fiction Writers

    Inspired by Elmore Leonard’s lauded book of the same name, Ten Rules of Writing, The Guardian asks a selection of 28 authors (from Margaret Atwood to Will Self) for their ten rules of writing for the aspiring fiction author (part two). Elmore Leonard’s ten are included, and he summarises them with the following: My most important rule…

  • Comedic Writing Tips

    There are six essential elements of humour, suggests Dilbert‘s Scott Adams, as he looks briefly at how to write comedy: Pick a Topic: The topic does half of your work. I look for topics that have at least one of the essential elements of humor: Clever, Cute, Bizarre, Cruel, Naughty, Recognizable. Simple Sentences: Be smart,…

  • The Success of James Patterson

    In what is likely the most extensive profile of author James Patterson I’ve read, we are bombarded by a plethora of incredible statistics: Patterson outsells John Grisham, Stephen King and Dan Brown combined; he authored one in every 17 hardback novels bought in the U.S. since 2006; and he has written 51 New York Times bestsellers…

  • Dava Sobel on Writing Science Books Full-Time

    Reflecting on her career as a science writer (she started as a technical writer at IBM before graduating into science journalism), Dava Sobel–author of the award-winning book Longitude–offers some thoughts on what it means to be a full-time author of popular science books: Both my parents loved to read, convincing me by their behavior that the best way…

  • E-Prime and the Retiring of ‘To Be’

    A form of constrained writing, E-Prime strives to completely restrict the use of the verb to be as a way to prevent implications of certainty and objectivity. As part of the This Column Will Change Your Life series, Oliver Burkeman discusses the merits of E-Prime and unambiguous language. To think about and function in the world, [Alfred…

  • The Transformative Power of a Narrative

    Can a narrative attached to an everyday object increase its objective value? That was the question posed by Rob Walker (author of The New York Times‘ Consumed column) and Joshua Glenn (author of Taking Things Seriously) when they started the Significant Objects Project—an experiment designed to test whether a series of stories created about an object…

  • Ways of Reading, Writing, Learning

    A Working Library’s Ways of Reading could be called the nine rules of reading, writing, and learning. My favourite three: Always read with a pen in hand. The pen should be used both to mark the text you want to remember and to write from where the text leaves you. Think of the text as the…

  • Writing Tips for Non-Writers

    Multiple Hugo Award-winner and Stargate Universe creative consultant John Scalzi offers ten writing tips for non-professional writers: Speak what you write. Punctuate, damn you. With sentences, shorter is better than longer. Learn to friggin’ spell. Don’t use words you don’t really know. Grammar matters, but not as much as anal grammar Nazis think it does. Front-load your point. Try…