Creative Writing Workshop by Miguel D'Addario

Author:Miguel D'Addario
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Babelcube Inc.
Published: 2018-04-07T16:00:00+00:00

Say goodbye to adjectives and adverbs

Descriptions are important to get a good narrative, but many people abuse adjectives and adverbs. Review your text and see all the words you can eliminate (for example: very, really, perhaps, amazing, incredible, truly, fair). As the storyteller Horacio Quiroga expressed "Useless will be as many tails of color adhere to a weak noun".

Do not repeat words

The amplitude of vocabulary, as well as the cultural level of a person are noticed in the excessive use of words. Look for synonyms or concepts that could replace what you wrote. The first thing you should do is find your crickets (the words that you repeat constantly), search them in your text with the functionality in Word of Ctrl + B and change them for others. The Spanish language is extremely broad; seize it.

Use subtitles or intermediate heads

When you make a text, especially if it is long, think about dividing it into subtopics and using intermediate heads. This helps to rest the sight and to make reading more fluid.

Do not abuse punctuation marks or bold letters

Most of the time you can omit punctuation marks such as parentheses and hyphens by adding periods or commas.

In this way the writing looks cleaner. It also avoids the excess of bold letters and italics; analyze well what you need to highlight and do it only when it merits.

Use spell checkers

It might sound obvious but not all do it. Although the Word tool is quite functional, keep in mind that it does not fix all the errors, especially if they are diacritic accents. If you do not know how to use a word, just do not use it. The same thing happens when it comes to grammar.

Be authentic

To get your posts to gain traction it is essential that you define what your voice, tone and writing style will be. Do not try to sound very different from how you speak, as the reader will notice, and do not try to imitate the style or ideas of someone else. Eye: never write of a topic that you do not know.

Establish a structure

In Journalism, there are several ways to structure a text. The simplest (and that can serve you when writing your entries) is the inverted pyramid, which is to go from most to least important. It is also recommended that in the first paragraph you answer the main five questions: What? Who? When? How? and Where?

Have a strong beginning and end

As in a good play or movie, the principle is basic to captivate the audience; while the outcome is what the viewer will remember most in the long term. Try to start and finish your texts with force. A good idea is to start with a question and end the answer.

Read a lot

To be a good writer it is necessary to be a good reader. Books, articles, magazines and posts can give you many ideas on how to tell a story, as well as spelling and vocabulary clues. Read about different topics and authors; you can also use them as references in your texts.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.