S34E5 – The Rule of Three in Writing
If two wrongs don’t make a right, try three. – Laurence J. Peter
If two wrongs don’t make a right, try three. – Laurence J. Peter
If reading makes you smart, then how come when you read a book they have to put the title of the book on top of every single page? Does anyone get halfway through a book, [and ask] what the hell am I reading? – Brian Regan
‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague…. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose,
By any other name would smell as sweet. – William Shakespeare
Write down everything that happens in the story, then in the second draft make it look like you knew what you were doing all along. – Neil Gaiman
Writing is a demanding profession and a selfish one. And because it is selfish and demanding, because it is compulsive and exacting, I didn’t embrace it. I succumbed to it. – Rod Sterling
Writing a first-draft battle scene is akin to real combat – chaos, confusion, and you must keep your cool as you fire word bullets downrange. – Don Roff
I’ll turn him into a flea, a harmless, little flea, and then I’ll put that flea in a box, and then I’ll put that box inside of another box, and then I’ll mail that box to myself, and when it arrives, I’ll smash it with a hammer! It’s brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, I tell you! Genius I say! Or, to save on postage, I’ll just poison him with this.- Yzma, Emperor’s New Groove
Readers take in dialogue one thought at a time. A frequent mistake of beginners is to combine thoughts, which may be suitable for other forms of writing but not for dialogue. Another mistake is speechifying. Three sentences at a time is tops, yet many beginners write speeches that go on and on. – Sol Stein
Exposition can serve as an explanation. It’s all in the arrangement…. Make them want the exposition so that, when you give it, it answers the questions they already possess. – Chuck Wendig
A little story is supported by a lot of untold backstory. What they get is more than what they see. – Karen Lord