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This exercise harkens back to what we covered in High Intensity Writing Workout No. 1. You’ll be using some of the skills you developed there to get through this workout. One “problem area” (to keep the workout metaphor working) for most writers early on in their careers involves tunnel vision. Whether working from notes or […]

One of the goals of any good writing is to pack a lot of information into as few words as possible. The biggest culprit in preventing this is the verb “to be.” The reason is simple: the verb is the lowest-common verb—it applies almost anywhere. But it is weak and flabby and applied too broadly. […]

Because I’ve started teaching online writing classes through Arizona State University’s Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, I’ve been having to put together exercises to help students understand and master a variety of techniques. One of the things I’m pretty much death on is using he said/she said or their variants in dialogue. I […]