The document provides tips for effective writing. It emphasizes using concrete examples, sensory details, metaphors, and stories to show rather than just tell. Allusions and references should be understandable to the intended audience. The creative process takes time and may involve preparation, incubation of ideas, illumination of solutions, and verification. Overall it stresses showing ideas vividly through specific examples, descriptions, and comparisons rather than vague statements to improve writing.
3. Why
writing
can be
boring
Opinions based on
emotions should not be
trusted because there
are no facts. Facts are
necessary to know
whether something is
important or not.
Nothing
Concrete
in here
6. Showing Telling
vs.
My brother is
an amazing
athlete.
My brother can run
down a cheetah, lift
a small automobile
over his head, and
throw a baseball
into low Earth orbit.
7. Showing Telling
vs.
Miriam is
brilliant.
Before she was 14,
Miriam had already
solved the Poincare
equation, memorized pi
to 1000 decimals, and
figured out how to
make Hot Pockets taste
homemade.
11. Personification
"There was a desert wind blowing that night.
It was one of those hot dry Santa Ana's that
come down through the mountain passes and
curl your hair and make your nerves jump
and your skin itch… Meek little wives feel the
edge of the carving knife and study their
husbands' necks. Anything can happen.”
Raymond Chandler
12. Metaphors
“Time has not stood still. It has washed over
me, washed me away, as if I’m nothing more
than a woman of sand, left by a careless child
too near the water.”
— The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
13. Metaphors
“She entered with ungainly struggle like some
huge awkward chicken, torn, squawking, out
of its coop.”
— The Adventure of the Three Gables,
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
15. Allusions
I’ve always aspired to be a SpongeBob—
always upbeat, always hopeful, always
getting into trouble with Squidward.
Make references that your audience will get.
16. Stories
Advice: Be efficient. Don’t be the person who
drones on and one. Don’t be that person who
focuses on irrelevant details.
20. Creativity takes time
“We have to continually be
jumping off cliffs and developing
our wings on the way down.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, If This Isn't Nice,What
Is?: Advice for theYoung
