A Writing Tip
Read novels while you’re writing.
How do they do it? Novelists keep the flow going, and it must be effortless. (Because of the page and book counts.) They don’t seem to need to think — they just write. They are the best of the best, and who else could we emulate better when writing blogs?
Keep it flowing, keep it like conversation. Dialogue.
“I’m not joking. There’s rumors that somebody else is missing a pile of horse shit, too, but I haven’t run that down, yet,” Flowers said.”
https://www.bookfrom.net/john-sandford/page,10,50425-stolen_prey.html
I wish I could keep my writing going to page 10,50425 like John Sandford, and keep my readers heartbeats rising. Oh… he’s one of the great novelists! I won’t give you a list, because it’d be endless. But of course there’s Stephen King, Nora Roberts, Lee Child . . . see? If you made a list, it could contain authors I’ve never even heard about… maybe.
Of course we aren’t necessarily writing novels on Medium. Though that does occur. But a staid technical subject could use some life using novelists’ techniques. There’s plenty of room for irony or humor in anything you write.
I’ve written some technical articles for uptight professors and editors and clients, and I try to inject humor, irony, or first-person musings in anything I write. In a technical environment, that’s kind of risky, but it makes me more careful to get the serious stuff technically correct. Thus everybody wins.
Novelists can extend a text to unreal lengths yet don’t ever bore me.
As for me, I have trouble going beyond or embellishing my message. But I’m learning from the novelists.
And that is all the message I have at the moment, and I’d be stupid to try to extend it. I’m no Stephen King, or to be more vulgar, James Patterson (what a jerk).
Thanks for reading.
… Fred Ermlich
