Category: Soup To Nuts

Sensitivity Readers
Post

Sensitivity Readers

Why a Sensitivity Reader?
Your cast of characters in any story is likely to be diverse, which means most of those characters won't be like you. In a circumstance where you write characters that have a different race, ethnicity, sex, gender, abilities, or even world view from yourself, it's good to run that by someone who embodies those traits.

Go Big, Open Strong!
Post

Go Big, Open Strong!

"When they think of huge openings, many people think of me" So says Hedwig, the transsexual East German rock star in John Cameron Mitchell's wonderful redemption story Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

The Importance of Word Order
Post

The Importance of Word Order

Almost all music fans have heard the classic love song "I Only Have Eyes For You." Its title and refrain both leverage "only" the way it's typically used in conversational English, even though its placement in the sentence renders a meaning that is probably not what the songwriter intended.

Using Liminality to Add Depth to Your Writing
Post

Using Liminality to Add Depth to Your Writing

Liminality is the state between what was and what has not yet come to pass. It gets its name from the Latin word “limen,” meaning “threshold.” Although it was a prominent trope in medieval literature, world literature describes a similar power in this state of transition.

Try, and Avoid “Try and”
Post

Try, and Avoid “Try and”

Like rodents getting into seemingly impenetrable buildings, colloquialisms have a way of sneaking into many pieces of otherwise respectable writing. Among the most common is the phrase “try and . . .” as in “Try and start the car” or “Try and win the game.”

Technologies Assisting the Blind to Read
Post

Technologies Assisting the Blind to Read

Back in the 20th century, I used to record myself reading chapters of a fellow college student’s textbooks, as he was blind. At the time, unless someone was sitting with him reading the textbook out loud, his only option to hear the text was to listen to a tape. Sure, Braille was also an option, though I’m guessing most of his textbooks may not have been available in Braille.

Time’s on Your Side
Post

Time’s on Your Side

Each genre of writing has a timeframe, its temporal setting—for news, product reviews, press releases, and nearly all corporate writing; the timeframe is the present. Anything else—celebrity profiles, short stories, screenplays and stage plays, novels—can have any sort of timeframe you wish. A story about a Civil War soldier can be told in the present tense, as if it’s a thriller...