by glorybee » Mon Mar 15, 2010 7:53 am
Hey there, class!
No lesson this week, and no homework—I’m taking some time off until after Easter. Going to recharge my batteries, tend to some family business, and take a little vacation with my hubby.
I’ll leave you with a
Quick Take: The word ‘unique’ is very often misused. It doesn’t mean creative or interesting. It means one of a kind. You can remember this by looking at the first three letters: uni-, like unicycle (one wheel) or unicorn (one horn).
Your fingerprints are unique—there are no others like them. A snowflake is unique—no two are the same. A thing cannot be “very” unique or “really” unique; if it’s the only one, it’s just plain ol’ unique. If there’s more than one, it’s not unique.
A thing can be creative without being unique—for example, an art print, of which there may be hundreds of identical prints issued (the original would be unique).
A thing may be unique without being creative—I have a quilt made from my grandmother’s dresses that is one-of-a-kind, but the pattern is an often-used one, copied by the quilter.
In writing, a piece may be unique (in fact, most writing is) without being interesting at all.
So there you have it, until some time in April. I continue to welcome ideas for future classes—I’m not really looking for grammar or punctuation ideas, but for writing tips along the line of what we’ve done so far, which I’ll summarize here:
1. Choose interesting words, especially nouns and verbs.
2. Be careful not to overuse adjectives and adverbs.
3. Pick the correct tense for your entry, and stick to it.
4. Eliminate exclamation points in narrative—use them only in dialog, and then sparingly.
5. Write your dialog so that it sounds natural.
6. Only occasionally use words other than “said” in your dialog tags.
7. Vary your dialog tag style.
8. Think out of the box.
Keep practicing those writing skills, and have a wonderful Easter. Christ is risen--He is risen indeed!
Last edited by
glorybee on Mon May 17, 2010 7:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
