Tag: writing
-
The Red Pen: To pass, or not to pass…on passive voice
Passive (aggressive) voice might be appropriate for those mildly shade-throwing work emails that get CC’d to your boss, but should you nix it in your writing? What is passive voice? When we’re talking about voice in grammar, we’re talking about what part of a clause is on the receiving end of the action—the subject, or…
-
The Red Pen: That is such a cliché
What they are I am an editor and an English teacher to the core. What this means is that I’ve been known to take love notes from the well-meaning suitors of my children and students, red pen them, and send them back. All’s fair in love and war, but not in writing: a comma splice…
-
Duck, Duck, Moose Blog Tour
Pink Umbrella Books is excited to announce the Duck, Duck, Moose blog tour, which will run March 20-30, 2018. NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON! About the book: Duck’s best friend Goose is gone for winter and Duck is lonely. The animals try to cheer Duck, but Duck, Duck, Pig is too messy, and Duck, Duck,…
-
The Red Pen: A Two-Step in Dialogue Tags
“How are you?” she breathed. “I think you know,” he thundered. “Really?” she drawled. “Really,” he growled. Feel like you need a cold shower after reading this (unintentionally) hot and melodramatic scene? That’s because of the poorly-used dialogue tags. Realistic dialogue is hard enough to write without having to worry about…
-
DEADLINE EXTENDED: Little Women 150th anniversary anthology open for submissions!
“I want to do something splendid . . . I think I shall write books . . . .” -Jo March, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, 1868 For generations, children around the world have come of age with Louisa May Alcott’s March girls. Their escapades and trials punctuated our own childhoods—maybe we weren’t victims of…
-
The Red Pen: Sentence Solutions
The ability to craft beautiful sentences is a rare gift. The ability to wreak grammatical havoc on all things syntactic is, alas, far more common. Here are three common mishaps and a pocketful of solutions to your most common syntax sins. Offender #1: The Run-On When you connect independent clauses without punctuation or conjunctions, you’ve…
-
Pitch Perfect in 3 Steps
“Are you crying?” Tom Hanks asks in A League of Their Own. “There’s no crying in baseball!” Maybe not in baseball…but certainly, many an author has shed tears over a pitch. So how do you turn your pitch into a home run? Step 1: Know Your Genre To say that your book is sci-fi is…
pinkumbrellapublishing.com 