Reading Aloud

writersfriend:

Word processors have been with us so long that we don’t recall writing any other way. Graybeards like to wax poetic about typewriters and legal pads, yet we won’t go there.

These old-timers do make one valid point: the speed of computing leads to careless mistakes. Luckily, a few simply employed techniques help writers find missing words and “fossils,” those extra words left when writing quickly and revising lines.

Technique One: The Standard Read-Aloud

This can be done even at the last minute, just before a draft is due. Read the draft, start to finish, aloud. Even better, bribe someone to read it to you. This way, doubled words and any words that sound crazy will jump out. The reader will not (one hopes) insert missing words.

Technique Two: The Backward “Read”

Start with the final sentence and read aloud, sentence by sentence, from the end to the start of the project. This method is far slower than method one, yet it has a powerful advantage. The reader gets no sense of the overall message in the project and will be less likely to insert words that are missing and make other silent corrections.

Technique Three: The Pencil Underline

This can be used when reading silently or aloud. Take a pencil and lightly underline as you read. This technique helps the reader avoid silently correcting problems.

url-goes-here:

have you ever been reading something and completely understood a line of foreshadowing and just whispered “shit”

(Source: celestiadarknessdementiaravenway, via midnightstarsheldhigh)

quietlyquotable:

It is unbelievably fantastic to just sit in the sun with a book.
Or to lay in the sun with a book.
Or to smell the pages of an old book and revel in the fact you can spend all day in the world of your choice.

(via teachingliteracy)

"I decided that my existence would be one of books and silence."

Carlos Ruiz Zafon (The Angel’s Game)

(Source: booklover, via onlyaworkingtitle)

Anonymous asked: in the form, what do you mean by "preferences" and level of criticism?

Hi there anon! 

I’m sorry that’s not clear, sometimes I know what I mean but no one else does. By preferences I mean what is your biggest preference when it comes to your partner. For example, maybe it’s really important that your partner is a romance writer.

By level of criticism, I tend to think of it High to Low. High being that your looking for publishing level, and low being that you’re just looking for the basic spelling and grammar type thing. 

Hope that helped!

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amandaonwriting:

My 15 Favourite Quotes On Libraries

1. It was good to walk into a library again; it smelled like home. ~Elizabeth Kostova
2. An original idea. That can’t be too hard. The library must be full of them. ~Stephen Fry
3. I do things like get in a taxi and say, “The library, and step on it.” ~David Foster Wallace
4. Madam, a circulating library in a town is an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge. ~Richard Brinsley Sheridan
5. The library is inhabited by spirits that come out of the pages at night. ~Isabel Allende
6. My grandma always said that God made libraries so that people didn’t have any excuse to be stupid. ~Joan Bauer
7. Libraries are our friends. ~Neil Gaiman
8. Book lovers will understand me, and they will know too, that part of the pleasure of a library lies in its very existence. ~Jan Morris
9. I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. ~Jorge Luis Borges
10. She sounds like someone who spends a lot of time in libraries, which are the best sorts of people. ~Catherynne M. Valente
11. If I have to spend time in purgatory before going to one place or the other, I guess I’ll be all right as long as there’s a lending library. ~Stephen King
12. What better place to kill time than a library? ~Diane Setterfield
13. The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library. ~Albert Einstein 
14. Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace and wit, reminders of order, calm and continuity, lakes of mental energy, neither warm nor cold, light nor dark…. In any library in the world, I am at home, unselfconscious, still and absorbed. ~Germaine Greer
15. [His] library was a fine dark place bricked with books, so anything could happen there and always did. All you had to do was pull a book from the shelf and open it and suddenly the darkness was not so dark anymore. ~Ray Bradbury

Source: Writers Write

by Amanda Patterson

Image: Street Art Utopia

(via justsomegirlxo)

(via a-wesomesauce)

(Source: theyuniversity)

How to Create a Plot Outline in Eight Easy Steps

writeworld:

by Glen Strathy

Here’s an easy way to come up with a brief plot outline for your novel.

One of the most powerful secrets to creating plots that are emotionally compelling is to incorporate the 8 Basic Plot Elements. Starting with your story idea, you only need to make eight choices to ensure the plot of your future novel hangs together in a meaningful way.

The best part is that you can make these choices and construct a brief plot outline in less than an hour.

Sound intriguing? Then let’s get started.

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(Source: brightvisionkid)