Tag: writing

How to Write a Book Proposal (3rd edition) by Michael Larsen

This book isn’t about how to write a non-fiction book, but about how to write a proposal, the document that will get a publisher interested in selling it. As author, you have to have a very clear idea about the people who are going to read your book, how many of them there are, and how to get their attention. After all, if you don’t know who you’re writing for, and you can’t guarantee that at least couple thousand people will line up to buy it, why should a publisher be interested in investing resources in your project?

I read this book because I had a specific idea for a non-fiction book that I could write. Unfortunately I think the time to have published it was like the end of 2023, beginning of 2024, and it would also probably have required me to have a collection of followers eager for my opinions specifically on that topic. I think I may have missed the boat.

This is the 3rd edition of this title. I bought in a used bookstore in 2023. It was published in 2004, and says quaint things like, you might want to use a computer to draft your proposal, because word processor software can make it easy for you to move things around; or you can just use 3×5 notecards. It’s very likely the 5th edition is more informative for someone writing in 2026. There’s even an eTextbook.

“Don’t use flashy dialogue tags,” she advised sagely.

What’s a flashy dialogue tag? Something exactly like “she advised sagely.”

The post title is an example of a fumblerule; a piece of advice that goes against itself.

In writing fiction, it is best to avoid flashy dialogue tags like “she growled angrily” and “he moped sullenly.”

Why? And what should we write instead?

*Image credit: Ebenezer Landells – https://www.abbottandholder-thelist.co.uk/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81100198

Continue reading “Don’t use flashy dialogue tags,” she advised sagely.

Notes on writing and fantasy fiction

Below is an attempt to consolidate what I know and would like to share from my experience in and around publishing and my knowledge as a reader.

Here’s an outline of the post:

Writing advice
Literary fiction vs. commercial fiction
Save the Cat by Blake Snyder
SPJG posts about writing advice books
SPJG posts about avoiding writing mistakes
Miscellaneous links

Recommended authors: children’s and YA fantasy
“Recent” (1980s onward)
“Classic” (1900 to 1980)

Publishing
Purpose
Audience
Context
Process via self-publishing
Process via traditional publishing

Writing communities
Singapore Writer’s Group
NaNoWriMo
Reddit

Conclusion

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The Novels of E.M. Forster

I recently read seven works by E.M. Forster in order of publication:

  • Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905)
  • The Longest Journey (1907)
  • A Room with a View (1908)
  • Howards End (1910)
  • A Passage to India (1924)
  • Maurice (written in 1913–14, published posthumously in 1971)
  • Aspects of the Novel (1927)

Forster is known for the mantra “Only connect,” a quote from Howard’s End. Perhaps his best-known novel, which I read previously, is A Passage To India. My favorite of the novels is A Room with a View, which I read and posted about previously.

See below for some thoughts on Forster’s writing.

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The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker

I cannot wholeheartedly recommend Steven Pinker’s style-guide / usage manual, but it does have a couple of important things to say about written English.

Respect Your Tools
Language has its own internal logic. Good writing respects that logic. Writers should study grammar explicitly rather than rely on intuition in order to communicate clearly, show respect for their readers, and inspire confidence in their work. Good writers are those who read widely enough to absorb good practices from a longstanding written English tradition. They know the rules but also when to break them.

Break the Rules
The Ancient and Venerable English Teachers’ Code—beloved by Grammar Nazis, Prescriptivists, Fussbudgets and Curmudgeons—is more what you’d call guidelines than actual rules, and some of the guidelines will lead you astray because (a) Some were written by people who didn’t understand English and (b) Thanks to natural and inevitable language change, the English we use today differs from the English of the past.

See below for more details about what I liked and what I didn’t like about Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style.

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English grammar: How to use pronouns ‘I’, ‘me’, and ‘myself’

The first-person singular pronouns of English are ‘I’, ‘me’, and ‘myself’. Although in daily speech people have been known to use them somewhat interchangeably, IMO it’s worth knowing which roles those different words are supposed to play in a sentence.

Give yourself a quiz. Read each of the sentences below and decide whether it is grammatically correct.

Me/Myself/I Usage Quiz

  • The horses were trained by Sylvia and myself.
  • Me and Sylvia sold the horses to a riding school.
  • The boss split the profit between Sylvia and I.

Answers and explanations after the jump.

Continue reading English grammar: How to use pronouns ‘I’, ‘me’, and ‘myself’

New Terrain / New Works featuring JY Yang at Sing Lit Station

I attended a talk on worldbuilding by Singaporean author JY Yang and took some photos and notes. My notes are not comprehensive, but are hopefully characteristic.

In keeping with Yang’s preferences, in the notes below, I have used they/them/their pronouns. (Still, being somewhat of a traditionalist in the realm of English grammar, I wish there were a distinct gender-neutral singular.)

About JY Yang (from Sing Lit Station)

After six years of writing speculative fiction, JY Yang finally finds themselves at the end of the critically acclaimed and bestselling Tensorate series, with the fourth and final volume, The Ascent to Godhood, out in July this year. As a postcolonial feminist writer who deals specifically with gender, cultural imperialism and structures of power in their work, JY Yang is currently embarking on the epic journey of crafting their first novel-length work of fiction. Described as a far-future space opera centred on the descendants of a doomed generation ship, it has giant robots, space stations under siege, emperors and hierophants, holy artifacts and faster-than-light travel. It is Joan of Arc meets Gundam.

About the Event (Worldbuilding “Lecture” at Sing Lit Station)

There were no PowerPoint slides; I can’t imagine the talk proceeding in that way. Yang was animated, spontaneous, and concise in sharing about their struggles and successes as a writer. The talk was neither wholly about worldbuilding nor off-topic, neither wholly driven by the author nor wholly driven by the audience. The chairs were filled, but there was space for everyone. It was a good-sized group, but still felt intimate. A delightful event.

Details below.
Continue reading New Terrain / New Works featuring JY Yang at Sing Lit Station

Five Kingdoms (Books 1 to 5) by Brandon Mull

In the fourth book in the excellent fantasy series Five Kingdoms by Brandon Mull, the main character decides that, even knowing what he knows at this point, he would go back in time and do it all again.

At a writing workshop I and some writer friends went to recently, we were told that, because a story always involves loss, the main character would always wish, at the end of the story, not to have experienced the events of the story.

Clearly there’s a disjuncture between commercial and literary fiction, and I prefer commercial fiction. See below for more on why.

Continue reading Five Kingdoms (Books 1 to 5) by Brandon Mull

Blog of the month!

Okay, so technically it’s one of five blogs of the month, but they gave me this badge that says “blog of the month”, so here we are.

It would be foolishly optimistic for me to assume my blog is about to “go viral” or start making me big affiliate bucks or whatever, and in the search for content to feature, I don’t assume I was terribly close to the top of the list.

Nevertheless, I’m pleased to have been selected, I’m seeing an (undoubtedly temporary) traffic bump since the listicle was published, and I even went so far as to create a Facebook page for this blog, in case any of you temporary visitors are thinking you might want to hear about future blog posts that way.