From time to time I do a little writing, more often I do a little reading, and one thing that always gets my llama is what I have come to call talking head syndrome.

I know I do it, and I have read published authors (most noteably Dean Koontz in his novel The Vision) who do it. And, as G. I. Joe used to say, knowing is half the battle. The other half of the battle is doing lots of research, lots of writing, and lots of editing. I can’t do the writing or the editing for you, but I have done a butt-load of research; it is your’s after the jump.

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…a nice summary of a bunch of the issues surrounding writing a novel. Many of the books on novel writing don’t cover much more than this and it’s free here.

Link
see also the NaNoNotepad

I can’t believe I got scooped on this one.

Capital Community College Foundation has a good site on Grammar and Writing which contains a very intensive guide

via[lifehack.org]
Link

There%u2019s Pie in the Lunchroom � Believe It

I have a screenwriting pet peeve. It’s a phrase that appears in every single sitcom, every 1-hour drama, every movie, every virtually anything that is scripted. It’s a phrase that is so ubiquitous that hearing it snaps me right out of whatever I’m watching. It’s everywhere.

What is it? “I can’t believe.”

I’ve been getting quite a few hits for The Elements of Style Cheat Sheet PDF that I created a few months back. It seems that the place where I had been storing the document is now gone. So I thought I would provide a new link.

I dropped the eoscs.pdf in the files section of the CHPercolator Yahoo! Group. You’ll need to register, but it is probably a good idea that you join the group even if you don’t want the cheat sheet.

The Elements of Style Cheat Sheet

Update! You can also download the document from Lulu.com : eoscs.pdf.

The Elmore Leonard Website

These are rules I’ve picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I’m writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what’s taking place in the story. If you have a facility for language and imagery and the sound of your voice pleases you, invisibility is not what you are after, and you can skip the rules. Still, you might look them over.

Bill Walsh’s Blogslot

If your search-and-replace function is loaded to stick in believe and receive because the one-syllable words aren’t good enough for edumacated individuals, well, cut it out.

Teenager wonders where have all the commas gone?

Now, there are probably a lot of people who wonder
what could make me so upset about the phrase "your so stupid." If you
haven’t caught the mistake by now, you may be one of those who irritate
me so. If you immediately saw the mistake, you might have been tempted
to look away in disgust.

from Lifestyle section of The Visalia Times Delta : Teenager wonders where have all the commas gone?

Hippys the world over salivate at the prospect of firing up the old bong in this redesign of the classic Volkswagen Van, from Verdier and Associates.

Sometimes the question of where to put a comma, how to use a verb or why
not to repeat a word can be important, even strategic. But most of the
time the author either missed that day’s grammar lesson in elementary
school or is too close to the manuscript to make corrections before I
see it.

Via Holt Uncensored