Writing

APPLY THE MINI-SKIRT RULE – ESSENTIAL WRITERS TIPS

March 29, 2017 jacquelineobyikocha16 Comments

USING THE MINI-SKIRT RULE

Mini skirt rule, writing tips, keep short, cover everything, writers, Golden rule

One of the golden rules of writing is the ‘mini-skirt rule.’ Using the mini-skirt rule can certainly make your prose sexier and vibrant; if you get my drift.

The rule indicates that you should ‘keep your prose long enough to cover everything, but short enough to keep it interesting for your readers.’

Don’t have your writing dressed up like a Victorian lady trussed up in a ball gown with girdles and multi-layered petticoats, topped off with a jacket and a bountiful hat of peacock feathers and flowers. Phew! That is literally exhausting to think of.

It’s a fine art to write in a strategic manner and to create a balance between keeping the bare necessities with some flesh to the bones and over spilling the prose with excesses.

For writers of fiction, don’t waste your words and bore your readers to such tears that your story or your book ends up in the dust gathering pile of books that went unread.

When it comes to length, follow this rule in keeping your story short and engrossing and work at making your book ‘unputdownable.’

‘Cut. Cut. Cut.’

Cut words, like those unnecessary adverbs.

Cut sentences

Cut pages

Cut paragraphs

Keep it short and simple

Things to consider when editing. READ More…

Writing

Essential Writers’ Tips 7

November 16, 2016November 16, 2016 jacquelineobyikocha3 Comments

To Improve, Prepare Yourself For Punishment

A great part of writing and being a writer involves criticism. A lot of time, we are afraid of having our work scrutinized constructively by others that we pass up opportunities to have them take a carving knife to our revered work.

However, to effectively improve your writing, you have to take certain steps that would certainly cause you to cringe.

If you can afford a professional writer or editor, pay them to look at your work and give you critical feedback without sweetening it. The tougher the criticism, the more helpful for you in the longer run.

The narrow road of the publishing industry is full of rejections and criticisms from publishing houses, editors, agent etc and the sooner your mind opens up to such circumstances the better accustomed you become. Read More

Writing

Write Garbage, Edit Brilliantly! ….Writer’s Quote Wednesday

March 16, 2016March 17, 2016 jacquelineobyikocha44 Comments

If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write.
– Somerset Maugham

It is perfectly okay to write garbage—as long as you edit brilliantly.
– C. J. Cherryh

The above quotes repeats in my head when I think of my writing and encourages me to trudge along.

Someone once asked me how I decided that I am writer and my simple response that I have lots of stories to tell which left a blank look on her face made me feel as if I spoke Greek. Now and again, her blank face surfaces in my memory and I begin to question myself.

When I am struggling to put down the riotous thoughts in my head into a readable format, the question rises again and sometimes, a tiny voice of doubt tells me, ‘YOU ARE A FRAUD!’ WRITER YOU ARE NOT!

I have learnt to slap and shut the impish voice down, to go ahead and scribble my nonsense and leave it at that.

Well, seeing such quotes from established authors does tickle my fancy bone, and I have come to realize that there is no perfect writer. We just write that which needs to be written and leave it at that.

Written for Writer’s quote Wednesday.