Login   Sign Up 



 
Random Read




GaiusCoffey's Blog on WriteWords

Add the opening text (255 characters max) from your personal blog posts and a link will be provided on your WW profile and also on the Writers section of the site.



Give Me Your Best Shot
Posted on 06/08/2012 by  GaiusCoffey


Online writing forums commonly contain critique requests with words to the effect that “this is an early draft.”...

Read Full Post

How to Become a Publishing Millionaire
Posted on 28/05/2012 by  GaiusCoffey


Stooge- ‘How do you become a publishing millionaire?’

Comic- ‘Start with a billion dollars…’

The great thing about comedy is that the above would work just as well if ‘publishing’ was replaced with oil, pharmaceuticals, software or horse-racing. But not all jokes are so portable. Consider this old classic:

Stooge- ‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’

Comic- ‘To get to the other side…’

You maybe didn’t laugh out loud this time, but when it was new and fresh and original, people would have been rolling in the aisles from the complex interplay of self-referential gagging, tweaking of audience preconceptions and surprising statement of the obvious. Like the ‘three men walk into a bar’ trope, it has achieved greatness through familiarity, adaptation and reuse.

Try migrating that joke to writing and…

Stooge- ‘Why did the author write a story?’
Comic- ‘...

Read Full Post

Choosing a Publishing Path
Posted on 22/02/2012 by  GaiusCoffey


Something momentous happened today; I made up my mind...

Read Full Post

Fighting an Invisible Enemy: Accepting Feedback
Posted on 10/12/2011 by  GaiusCoffey


A consistent theme in writing books and blogs is the advice to seek out honest feedback. It’s a pretty straightforward argument — if you’d thought there was a problem in your prose, you’d have fixed it, right? So, any remaining problems are problems you cannot see. You cannot fix problems you cannot see, so you recruit...

Read Full Post

Challenging The Myth: A Critique Philosophy
Posted on 27/01/2011 by  GaiusCoffey


Any writer who has ever critiqued another writer’s work will be familiar with that awful sensation when a well-intentioned critique causes offence and results in bad-blood. Such exchanges are inevitable whenever honest opinion is sought or given, especially where the opinion surprises the recipient. However, if you accept the premise that the purpose of critique is to develop a writer’s skills, it is precisely those surprises that are potentially the most valuable...

Read Full Post

Here, But Not Here
Posted on 20/09/2010 by  GaiusCoffey


Not so long ago, I wrote what I thought one of my better stories. I decided to enter it for a competition and I read it out to my terrestrial writing group to see if they could suggest any tweaks. The tension in the room was tangible before the end of the second paragraph and they were silent for some time after I finished reading. Sometimes, silence is a good thing as your audience has been moved by what they’ve heard and need a moment to compose their thoughts.

It wasn’t that kind of silence...

Read Full Post