Filter words

I read a blog post on filter words a few days ago and I’ve gotten so much out of it that I thought I would pass it along.

I’ve written for a long time.  I’ve always enjoyed writing and telling stories, and I’m not that bad at it.  But writing a book is different from just telling a story.  There are mechanics involved.  Since I’ve only recently started taking writing seriously (starting a hundred chapter ones does not count as serious), I’ve had a lot to learn.

Fiction itself is easy.  You just make stuff up, that’s why it’s called fiction.  Doing it well, on the other hand, is hard.  You have to make it believable and draw the reader into the story and characters.  How you do that is just as important as the story concept.  It takes time and practice and lots of learning.

Giving and receiving critiques help you learn.  You hear a lot of comments, though that make sense on the surface but without concrete examples, it’s not as easy to grasp as one would think.  There are comments on distance, on active vs. passive, showing vs. telling — the list just goes on.  And it’s like pulling teeth to get someone to actually explain it to you.  Of course, it’s not their job to teach you how to write but still, it would be nice to have an explanation every once in a while.

So I think I’d like to troll the web and find all sites that are great at giving examples of all those comments you might receive but don’t have a clue what it means or how to fix it.

This particular post on Write It Sideways, I thought, was a great post on filter words and gave examples that are clearly understood.  It helped me tremendously.