Wendigisms 2: The Penmonkey Strikes Back

I needed a good title for the sequel.  I thought about naming this one Revenge of the Pen Monkey but Chuck already used that title for one of his writing books.  Next was Dead Man’s Prostate, but that’s just a little too gross to publish across the interwebs.  The Quickening doesn’t sound bad, but I’m happy with what I picked. 

These are all giblets of stuff Chuck has published on his website and most are related to the art of writing in some form or fashion.  They’re priceless.  The first page of stuff is here on my 1st Wendigisms page. You can always read more over at Terribleminds.  

And without further ado:

• Feculent turd-heads
• Eff that in the ay, emmer-effer
• I will beat you to death with a sock full of your own teeth
• Mornings tend to be when your brain is at its lemon-scented freshest
• Think of this as a narrative laxative

Writing Advice for the New Novelist (Revisited)

I decided to take a look at this advice to see if it was still valid after more than a year of learning.  I tweaked it a little and added a bit here and there.  If you have something you think I'm missing I'd love to hear it.

• Choose your voice for the story and be consistent.   I think most authors will tell you to avoid present tense, so past tense is the most common method.   Third person narrative is the most common, but books are also written in first person, Twilight by Stepanie Meyers is a good example, and second person, Halting State by Charles Stross is a good example of this form, but is fairly rare.  There also variations on how to use the third person in the form of omniscient, objective(primarily used for news reporting) and limited, which can lend itself to a narrator that is unreliable.  Unreliable just means you only see what the character sees and feel what the character feels, whether it’s a true representation of reality or not.  Third person works very well if you are changing the narrator.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative_mode