Words Fail Me by Patricia T. O’Conner

Excerpts:

The family sat down to dinner. <Imagine>

The Hawaiian family sat down to dinner <See the difference?>

If a descriptive phrase springs to mind, pre-assembled and ready to use, put it back in the box.

Adjectives and adverbs are supposed to add flavor to your writing, but puny, useless ones only water it down.

Search and destroy: very, a little, a bit, pretty, somewhat, sort of, kind of, really, rather, and actually.

How many sheep are in this fold? Babe’s flock of sheep increased threefold last year. No, the answer isn’t thirty, it’s forty – the original ten, plus three times that number.

Whether you realize it or not, everything you write has a perspective. And you change perspective all the time, perhaps without even knowing it…. This method of switching perspectives—from near to far, general to specific, personal to impersonal—has long been used by fiction writers, not only to change the point of view from character to character, but also to alternate scenes in the present with flashbacks to the past.

Indirect writing is a limp handshake with the reader. It’s speaking out of the corner of your moth. It’s refusing to look the reader in the eye. It’s weak, evasive, and dishonest, and in some fields—business, politics, public relations, advertising—it’s a skill that’s been elevated to an art.

Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open manhole and die. Mel Brooks