Jan Michaels's Articles in Writing

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Word Processor Tricks Many writers have tried electronic style checkers, such as Grammatik or Correct Grammar, which are sold either as standalone utilities or are included as components of word-processing programs. And most who have tried them have given up on them: their advice is more often wrong than right, and the "errors" they perceive often aren't errors at all. Show, don't tell Every writing student has heard the rule that you should show, not tell, but this principle seems to be among the hardest for beginners to master. First, what's the difference between the two Well, "telling" is the reliance on simple exposition: Description is the heart of a good story There was a cartoon in The New Yorker many years ago in which the female host of a posh party accosts one of her guests: "I've just learned that you wrote a novel based on somebody else's screenplay. Please leave my house at once." It's true that novelizations are the antithesis of literature, but when I was a teenager, desperate to learn how to write, I read dozens of them. Creating Charactors Psst! Wanna hear a secret The people in most stories aren't really humans -- they're robots! Real people are quite accidental, the result of a random jumbling of genes and a chaotic life. But story people are made to order to do a specific job. In other words, robots! Choose a point of view New writers are often baffled when trying to choose a point of view for their stories and novels. But, actually, the choice is easy. Over ninety percent of all modern speculative fiction is written using the same POV: limited third person. "Third person" ("she did this; he did that") means the story is not told in first person ("I did this"), or the always-irritating second person ("you did this"). That's easy enough. But what does "limited" mean Writing convincing dialogue Writing convincing dialogue is one of the hardest things for new writers to master. In fact, it's so rarely done well in any form of fiction that when it is done right, people rally around it. The movie Pulp Fiction, Terry McMillan's novel Waiting to Exhale, and the TV series My So-Called Life were all remarkable in large part because of how believably the characters spoke.

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