Okay. I know the title of our podcast this week sounds mean, but it’s truth. You want to be a good writer or good liver, right?
Digression: Not a liver like an organ, but a liver like someone who is alive.
Anyway, digression over.
You want to be good. So that means what? You guessed it. It means that you can’t be lazy.
What’s a lazy writer?
It’s someone who babbles and has a lot of words that really say nothing. So here are hot tips about that.
PROBLEM #1: USING WAY TOO MANY TO-BE VERBS.
TIP #1: Don’t.
A to-be verb is: is, are, was, were, has been, had been,
A to-be verb hides the real importance of your sentence in a layer of whatever.
How about an example?
Lazy to-be sentence:
Being thrilled to be snowboarding is such a real feeling.
So the subject up there is so dull. It’s being thrilled.
How about we switch it up to having a real concrete subject:
The yeti is thrilled to be snowboarding today.
Whoa, way better, right? We now know the yeti is thrilled and that’s more concrete, but we still have that ‘to be’ verb with ‘is.’
One more try:
The yeti snowboards, pumping his hairy fist in the air, screaming, “Yee-haw!”
We now have a much better image of the yeti and his joy. Also we just all have an image of a yeti, which is always a bonus.
PROBLEM #2: WRITING LIKE YOU’RE TRYING TO HIT A TEACHER-INSPIRED WORD COUNT ON A U.S. HISTORY PAPER ABOUT THE ANTEBELLUM AND YOU ARE JUST PUTTING IN WORDS TO FILL UP SPACE.
TIP #2: Don’t babble.
You know what we mean, right?
We’re talking about the never-ending sentence. Something like this:
If this economic crisis is able to be adjudicated with both the president and Congress’s approval, there will likely be an increased number of regulatory-relief provisions that will also be passed, which should make a resulting impact on the home-owner’s monetary status.
And all you hear is blah-blah-blah-BLAH-blah.
Don’t do that in your fiction.
Writing Tip of the Pod
Don’t babble. Don’t pad your thoughts down with meaningless words
Dog Tip for Life
Meandering with purpose is the best. Don’t bark for no reason because then people won’t listen to your important growls.
SHOUT OUT
The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song? It’s “Night Owl” by Broke For Free.
Note: We hunt for ghosts and talk about douchebags in our random thoughts, which are not transcribed here.
WHERE TO FIND US
The podcast link if you don’t see it above. Plus, it’s everywhere like Apple Music, iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, and more. Just google, “DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE” then like and subscribe.
Continue reading “THE CASE AGAINST LAZINESS AND DOUCHEBAGS.”