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Should You Write a Manic Pixie Dream Girl?
You’re reading this on the internet, so you’ve probably heard of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. You probably have a decent idea of what she is and where she exists in the world of fiction. There’s like a seventy percent chance you immediately associate the term with Zooey Deschanel, and considering most of her well-known…
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No, You Can’t Reinvent the Wheel, But…
In his comedy special “New In Town” John Mulaney remarks that the satisfaction of cancelling plans is akin to using heroin. Having never used heroin myself, I can neither confirm nor deny the validity of this statement; I can however affirm that I love not doing things. I’m a homebody through and through, and I…
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5 Things About Writing That I Learned From My Dog
My wife and I got our first dog together in November of 2019. I should first clarify by saying that of course we grew up with dogs, both us with labradors whom we loved and adored, but the dog we took in during the waning months of 2019 was our dog. Like never before in…
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Writing Realistic Dialogue: How Real is Too Real?
If you struggle with writing dialogue, you’re definitely not alone. As a big part of characterization, dialogue can be the difference between whether a reader loves or hates your characters. Dialogue that’s not broken up by action can be confusing, but too many dialogue tags can bog down your writing. Plus, people tend to talk…
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How to Edit Your First Draft
Your fingers hover the keyboard. You inhale deeply. Then you do it: you type the words “The End.” You exhale. You blink back tears of joy. You’ve finished the first draft of your story! It hasn’t been easy, but you’ve pushed through. You’ve done the thing. You finished your draft. Then you think, “Now what?”…
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Stop Putting Commas Before Verbs!
My dearest internet writers who have chosen quantity over quality and eschewed the laws of grammar in the name of poorly constructed stream of consciousness sentences, this one is for you. Rather, I suppose, it is meant for you, but it is really and truly for the grammarians and pedants of the world who will…
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Mourning My Morning Pages
From March through the end of August, I experienced a major creative dry spell that convinced me I wasn’t a writer anymore. I was just a person who happened to write sometimes. But my dad, another evening writer, gifted me The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron because his friend said it was life-changing. I’m sure…
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How to Spark Your Writing with Mood Boards
As writers, we’ve all been there. Staring at a blank page, an idea humming in the back of your mind. You write a sentence. Read it. Delete it. Rinse and repeat. You know what you want to write. You have ideas and characters and a general idea of the setting or aesthetics. But the words…
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The 5-Paragraph Essay Will Be Your Best Friend in College
There’s a rampant hatred of the five-paragraph essay among academics and writing instructors, and I’ve heard many a teacher express the desire to do away with it completely. The arguments for its destruction usually revolve around students’ stunted writing abilities, especially in terms of writing for a specific audience, but every criticism I’ve found is…
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You’re Saying More Than You Think You Are
This is not about body language. It has nothing to do with tone of voice or eye contact or facial expressions. This is about the unconscious linguistic associations that people will make while reading your writing, and why ignoring things like etymology and prosody makes you a really bad writer. But first, What is prosody?…
The Lit Nerds 