Some Solid Writing Advice

[Tanuki Racoon]

http://www.mantex.co.uk/samples/rules.htm

Not only is it funny, it's mostly good advice to any aspiring writers here.

[DesDownunder]

Good stuff, WBMS.

I had seen it before but I enjoyed reading through them again.

[Tanuki Racoon]

http://www.pammc.com/dialogue.htm <--- and now, on to dialogue

[DesDownunder]

Now that one I haven't seen before. I've seen similar, but not as good.

The five points in the third paragraph I would sum up as, "Every word must contribute to the drama of the story telling whether that be a comedic aside, a character description, or even an exposition on the setting of the story."

There must be a dramatic reason, relevance, a relationship at all times to every word and phrase.

That much said I would also note that good writing sometimes conceals the obvious relevance between the words and the drama or even the plot, but it does this deliberately. The connection is one for us to work out or to be revealed later.

I cannot quite agree with the idea of underling internal thoughts as explained in the final point.

The underlining of words is far too entrenched in my experience to mean an emphasis of a word or phrase for this to work for me. I find it distracting. In fact I cannot recall a single instance of using underlining in this way, except for my school-boy days of marking the lines I was supposed to remember for an examination.

There are numerous instances in literature where italicizing is used to convey internal thoughts.

Personally I would rather contain the internal dialogue within the structure of the narrative such as "The thought occurred to him that he did not understand it all;" or "I pondered on my lack of understanding."

"They could tell he was trying to understand it, by his silence."

Italics are most useful for conveying special meaning to a phrase, noun or verb for dramatic emphasis or differentiation.

Overuse should be avoided.

Even so long passages of flash back or exposition in italics are not uncommon.

Underlining makes me very nervous in case I fail Friday morning's exam.