SteveCuno.com
  • Home
  • Books, Articles, and More
  • Cunoblog
  • Contact / Discuss a project

Random thoughts on writing

8/26/2023

0 Comments

 
Picture
To create art is to risk.

In writing, passive voice is to be avoided.

Resolved: Henceforth, any mystery writer who puts “There’s still one thing I don’t understand“ in the mouth of a character at the wrap-up of the denouement shall be subject to a sound slap, a wagging in finger in the face, and a thorough scolding.

There should be mandatory jail time for writers who pen “with every fiber of [possessive pronoun] being.”

Authors who write “it is what it is” should sit in a corner and not be permitted to speak or write for 90 days while they ponder the seriousness of their crime.

If I berate you for not knowing that vault has two different meanings, is it an ad homonym attack? If I berate you for using there for their, is it an ad homophone attack?

Novelists who switch between first and third person voice from one chapter to the next should not be permitted to live.

Sometimes alliteration marks good writing. More often, it’s a simple show of sophomoric syntactical silliness.

More people should write, but fewer people should publish.

Robert Louis Stevenson has a nightmare about Jeckyll and Hyde and writes a bestseller. I had a nightmare about weak coffee. What I am supposed to do with that?

I like picking up a new word here or there, so I don’t mind an author who on occasion sends me to the dictionary. But the fellow who penned “absquatulated” where “fled” would have sufficed deserves a slap.

I’m unimpressed when people say, “I just finished my first novel.” Unless they mean writing, not reading.

Proposed: That the next screenwriter who places “This isn’t over yet” in the hero’s mouth be subject to administrative leave without pay and not less than 120 hours of community service. No real hero would say that. Besides, unless the end credits are rolling, it’s implicit.
 
Thanks to movies, I'm not afraid of being held against my will. I know that in every secure facility is a ventilator shaft big enough for an adult to crawl through.

I look forward to the day I see a novel advertised, “Now a minor motion picture.”

0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Welcome to Cunoblog

    ... where I share thoughts about writing. ​I don’t consider myself a writing authority, but that doesn’t keep me from presuming to blog like one. Oh, and I reserve the right to digress when I feel like it.

    Archives

    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    February 2023
    December 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    September 2021
    June 2021
    March 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

This site and all items herein © 2023 Steve Cuno
  • Home
  • Books, Articles, and More
  • Cunoblog
  • Contact / Discuss a project