Showing posts with label character. Show all posts
Showing posts with label character. Show all posts

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Write Good! er, um, well

"There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can."
Saul Bellow Jewish-American author, who won the Nobel Prize. Jewish Virtual Library

This quote can cover lots of territory. Out of context, we don't know who the enemy is.
Who? Our critics, reviewers with a tendency toward sadistic literary knife twisting? Definitely, superior writing will put them in their place.
This cartoon is a good example of writing well. The point is made through sarcasm. Words count, but must be written with care to actually express an idea.
Or could the enemy be someone against what we hold dear? Does the enemy undermine the American dream? Thomas Paine used writing to communicate the ideas of the Revolution to common farmers as well as to intellectuals, using words to stir the hearts of the leaders and followers of the Revolution. But Thomas Paine espoused a deist's anger against God and the Bible in later tracts.
So the enemy might be a good person with a concept that does not glorify God. A bludgeon does nothing to change one's opinion, but carefully crafted words can. It behooves us to write well when we wish to influence our readers to ponder the things of God.

Writing well is a worthy goal.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Lost

Chapter 19; 33,702
Writer's Tip: Not lost like a the TV show, but a lost character. As I looked over the scene I wrote yesterday, I realized a very important minor dragon was on the first and second page, but disappeared on the third, fourth, and fifth. No, he is not gifted with invisibility. The other characters were busy, and I just forgot him. So I went back and placed him on each page. He fit into the action on each page, so it wasn't to arduous. It is not necessary for every character who is known to be in the scene to appear on every page. However, ignoring someone for three whole pages is rude. Not only you have forgotten his presence, but the reader has as well. When he suddenly appears again, it knocks the reader out of the story. And that is not good.