Creative writing guidance: sound advice from a professional writer, the author of more than ten published novels, on devising plots, editing and proofreading.
The advice is clear, concise and practical. The section on editing/proofreading takes a rather hard line, indicating that this is a part of the process which MUST be done right. But that's what you wanted, isn't it? You're seriously interested in how to write, okay? If not, then why are you here? Writing is hard work. Sometimes very hard. If you'd rather just read, then materials on this site includes full text novels (fantasy, SF and military SF), short stories (horror, fantasy and SF), writing advice, and the full text of medical memoir CANCER PATIENT This website is by professional author Hugh Cook, aka Hugh Walter Gilbert Cook, author of the CHRONICLES OF AN AGE OF DARKNESS etc. Site also includes poetry and flash fiction. |
Clear, precise guidance on how to write Advice on elements of writing, including plot, some mechanical issues and the business of proofreading and editing. A compact guide to the art of writing fiction, compressed into a very small but very tasty nutshell. This section on writing guidance is incorporated in the literary miscellany THIS IS A PICTURE OF YOUR GOD: A HUGH COOK READER, which you can buy online if you want. Click to read sections of literary miscellany This Is A Picture of Your God (And, yes, if you click the link above, you do get to see the picture, your god, drawn up close and very, very personal.) To see what Hugh Cook has been up to recently in the creative field, check out his new collection of poems, the Genghis Lotus Poetry Collection |
WRITING GUIDANCE section ("How to Write") Simple instructions for constructing a plot. A recipe, like a recipe for baking cookies. Some assembly required. Life experience is helpful: getting married, working on fishing trawlers, going to war, joining an organized crime gang, entering politics, living in a cardboard box for a couple of years, whatever. That said, this lean passage pretty much communicates what is teachable regarding plot construction. Read it and believe it. An expert writes. BOY HAS ALREADY MET GIRL A simple solution to handling the boy meets girl business. PRACTICAL WRITING MECHANICS Work habits, keeping track of work done, plot and promise. how many characters should there be? Managing transitions. Being satisfied with a simple straightforward workable sentence. THE PLANET OR THE SHOE A set of writing exercise. If you have total facility then you will learn nothing from this. If some things turn out to be easier than others then you may be able to extract a lesson from the experiment. If you cannot, then you cannot: the experiment is offered, but is not explained. Hint: to the extent that there is a message, the message can be extracted from the title, “The Planet or the Shoe’. PROOFREADING AND EDITING A long and deeply serious look at proofreading and editing, over seven thousand words going into details of how to hunt for typos, how to edit so things make sense and how to tweak the text for style. Warning: your sense of good style is, ultimately, your own, and my stylistic notions may not be yours. |
All the stuff this page boasts about? The free online reading material, the medical memoir, the poems? Click the link just above to get at it. |