All Write - Fiction Advice

The strength of your writing comes from the choice of words you use. The general advice is that certain words help strengthen narrative, like verbs and nouns, while others, such as adjectives and adverbs, can weaken it. So why do verbs and nouns make for better writing? Nouns make up a large part of the English language – they denote things, people, animals, actions, places and even ideas. They are as versatile as they are useful because they have so many functions. Every sentence you write contains verbs and nouns, but because writers tend to rely too much on adjectives and adverbs, it often results in a lack of nouns and verbs in the narrative. There are several types of nouns: Proper, Common, Collective, Abstract, Countable and Uncountable nouns. A proper noun is a specific or unique name of a person, place or thing. Jupiter, New York and Samantha are proper nouns.   Common nouns, on the other hand, refer to ordinary objects and things, names and places etc., for...

Every writer at some point has probably asked themselves whether they should use a comma or a semi colon, as they are often seen as interchangeable. This is why the humble comma is abused, but both the semicolon and the comma provide different functions in your writing and shouldn’t be confused with one another.   Commas are used to show a very short pause in sentences or to separate various objects in a sentence or several items in a list. Semi-colons, however, are used to separate two independent clauses that are closely related. They are also useful when listing ideas or phrases, just like commas do, which is why they may confuse writers. Effective writing is all about using words and punctuation to your advantage to produce the right effect. Commas in the right place can do this, especially when you want to create that momentary pause; a split second hesitation, for instance: Her expression folded, and with her eyes veiled, he could no longer read her. He wondered ...