Word by Word

Practical insights for writers from Jessica P Morrell

Archive for the 'Writing advice' Category

Practical

I was just talking with a lovely, talented author about a novel she’s working on. She’s having doubts and we were brainstorming how the story could unfold. I started suggesting solutions, rattling them off…..as I tend to do. And  she laughed and said, “But this is so practical.” “Well, yes. I am practical. Sometimes solutions […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Quick Take: Get into your body

Our minds are crowded little places and we too often sit at our computers our breaths shallow and shoulders riding high. Or, after hours spent alone in your head it feels like an echo chamber. Yet your inner knowing is connected to your heart beat, your breath, your bones. The more you write from your […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Quick Tip: Commas

    I see this mistake often in manuscripts so just wanted to pass along this reminder about using commas to separate adjectives and after independent clauses. From the Purdue OWL: “Use commas to separate independent clauses when they are joined by any of these seven coordinating conjunctions: and, but, for, or, nor, so, yet. […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Characters We’ve Never Met Before

Fiction readers want to meet story people that they cannot meet in the ordinary world. They also want these people to possess complicated world views and unexpected moral codes. The cast members of Mario Puzo’s The Godfather are splendid examples of this. It’s one of the first novels that depicted mafia families in a sympathetic […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Give Sorrow Words

Give Sorrow Words There was a shooting in a nearby high school yesterday. A student dead along with the shooter. Details are still sketchy, motives unknown. This follows shootings in Las Vegas the previous day with two police officers gunned down while they ate lunch, a felon in possession of weapons, a suicide pact. Yesterday […]

Read the rest of this entry »

June

Last night we were eating dinner in the back yard. Birds were darting in to the feeders, down the block someone was practicing on an electric guitar, and the air was soft as velvet. Although it’s still not summer, it feels likes it.  The roses are abloom all over town and the greens have deepened […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Writing is Hard

Time spent focusing on art is a privilege and a gift. The writing doesn’t make me happy, but it makes me happier, and it makes everything else easier to take. Stephen Elliot, from an essay first published in Tin House             If you’re a writer you know that writing can be the best fun you’ll […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Resonance

Writing that, because of its elegance or verve, commands not only attention but a place in the reader’s memory. Writing that, because of its unique approach to subject matter, brings an emotional melding with the reader. Resonance is responsiveness. Resonance is communion. Resonance brings a writer/reader atonement—a harmony intellectually, or emotionally, or both. Peter Jacobi […]

Read the rest of this entry »