Archive for the ‘WRITING STYLE’ Category
Tension Between Auras
It seemed as if the very whiff of masculinity, the smell of tobacco smoke, or a bachelor’s joke, would spark off this feverish femininity and entice it to a lascivious virgin birth. -Bruno Schulz, “The Street of Crocodiles” I ran barefoot to the window. The sky was swept lengthwise by the gusts of the wind. […]
Filed under: WRITING STYLE | Closed
Tags: Bruno Schulz
Parallel Structures
Today I’m just going to present 4 quick examples of a device you can use to delight your reader. I’m sure there’s some kind of classical rhetorical term for this, but I don’t know it. I just call it a sentence with parallel structures: a sentence where a statement is made, then repeated with the […]
Filed under: DIALOG, WRITING STYLE | 2 Comments
Tags: akutagawa ryunosuke, borges, Gu Long, wuxia
The rules of timekeeping are supposed to be simple in fiction. Choose a tense when you start writing, and stick to that tense throughout — whether it’s past, present, or (god help us) future. Sometimes, though, cutting to the present tense in your past tense story can create some unusual & noteworthy effects.Today at SpecTechnique […]
Filed under: MICRO-MANAGEMENT, STRUCTURE, WRITING STYLE | 5 Comments
Tags: alfred bester, john le carre, M John Harrison, Mary Gentle, poul anderson, vampire hunter d
Flip the Story
Yesterday at SpecTechnique we looked at cases when a cliche is deformed or expanded. When you’re going into a deformed cliche, you think you’ve seen this line before. Then when the cliche flips around on you, you’re taken by surprise. This is a technique writers can use to breach their readers’ defenses. Today we’re leaving […]
Filed under: ACTION, CHARACTERIZATION, EXPOSITION, MICRO-MANAGEMENT, STRUCTURE, Uncategorized, VIEWPOINT, WORLDBUILDING, WRITING STYLE | 1 Comment
Tags: China Mieville, John Scalzi, Mary Gentle, Osamu Tezuka, Star Wars
Deformed Cliches
A quick entry today…. And from the Stygian abyss of the past, dear reader, I bring an evangelical gospel of good news, nothing less than a divine commandment…. Receive this blog post as an omen!!! Because today at SpecTechnique we’re looking at deforming cliches, and how to bend ‘em back into shapes that are fresh […]
Filed under: WRITING STYLE | Closed
Tags: Balzac, Cliches, John Kennedy Toole, M John Harrison, Robert Silverberg, Thomas Mann
SpecTechnique 