The Four-Letter Words of Writing

S11E9 – Best: Improving Your Writing to Achieve Your Best

Hard work without talent is a shame, but talent without hard work is a tragedy. – Robert Half

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S11 Bonus Episode – Read: How to Read as a Writer

The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book. – Samuel Johnson

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S11E8 – Plan: Basics of Planning a Story from Start to Finish

I don’t plot my books rigidly, follow a preconceived structure. A novel mustn’t be a closed system – it’s a quest. – Kurt Vonnegut

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S11E7 – Time: Maintaining Momentum Through a Story

Making sure that geography and timelines work is always the hardest part of writing. But you owe it to the readers to get it right. – Michael Scott

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S11E6 – Edit: Why Editing is Essential for the Business of Publishing

Writing without revising is the literary equivalent of waltzing gaily out of the house in your underwear. – Patricia Fuller

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S11E5 – Stop: Making the Decision to Abandon or Pause a Story

We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things because we’re curious. And curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. – Walt Disney

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S11E3 – Kiss: Why and How to Include Romantic Subplots

I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it’s these things I’d believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn’t all she should be. I love her and it is the beginning of everything. – F. Scott Fitzgerald

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S11E2 – Tell: How to Identify and Correct Cases of Telling

Books. It’s always easier to tell people that a character is funny rather than attempt to hit the punchline of a joke that character would’ve said. But if we all simply told, books would cease to exist. And so would empathy. And feeling. – Joyce Rachelle

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