#writing basics

Afflict - to cause suffering or unhappiness (something a disease does) Inflict - to force pain or suffering (like if you smack someone) (Both cause pain)

Allude - to refer to something in an indirect manner Elude - to evade

Alone - no other person is with you Lonely - you are alone, and sad as a result

Amicable - a friendliness or goodwill between people or groups Amiable - friendly disposition

Arise - happen or occur Rise - to go up

Assent - refers to agreement Ascent - a climb

Aver - to affirm Avow - to openly declare

Correlation - a relationship Corollary - more like a consequence

Disassemble - to take something apart Dissemble - to hide your true self

Discreet - under the radar, careful Discrete - individual or detached

Disinterested - unbiased; out of the loop Uninterested - don't give a hoot; bored

Disperse - to scatter Disburse - to pay

Eminent - famous Imminent - refers to something about to happen Immanent - inherent

Exalt - to glorify or elevate something Exult - to rejoice

Expedient - something helpful Expeditious - speedy

Extant - still here Extent - the range of something

Faze - to disturb, bother, or embarrass Phase - a stage or step

Fictional - literary Fictive - specific Fictitious - just plain fake

Imply - to hint at something Infer - to make an educated guess

Ingenious - smart and clever Ingenuous - innocent and naive

Insidious - something that lies in wait to get you Invidious - something offensive or defamatory

Loath - unwilling or reluctant Loathe - to hate

Morbid - describes something gruesome Moribund - the act of dying

Paradox - a logical puzzle that seems to contradict itself Oxymoron - a figure of speech—words that seem to cancel each other out (e.g., instant classic)

Parameter - a limit that affects how something can be done Perimeter - the outline of a physical area

Practical - sensible Practicable - possible

Pragmatic - you're practical Dogmatic - you follow the rules

Premiere - the first public performance of something Premier - the very best

Prescribe - to recommend Proscribe - to forbid

Rebut - to try to prove something isn’t true Refute - to actually prove it isn’t

Reluctant - resisting or unwilling Reticent - quiet, restrained, or unwilling to communicate

• Start a new paragraph every time a new character speaks. • Put quotation marks around spoken words. • Dialogue tags usually follow the sentence with a comma.

Example: “I'm not going back,” she said.

Dialogue with a tag before the quote

Use a comma after the tag.

Example: She said, “I'm not going back.”

Dialogue with action instead of a tag

Use a period after the action.

Example: She crossed her arms. “I'm not going back.”

When dialogue continues after a tag

Use commas inside the quotation marks.

Example: “I'm not going back,” she said, “no matter what you tell me.”

Questions and exclamations

Keep the question mark or exclamation point inside the quotation marks.

Example: “Where are you going?” he asked.

“I can't believe this!” she shouted.

Interrupted dialogue

Use em dashes when dialogue is cut off.

Example: “But I thought you—” “You thought wrong.”

Trailing off

Use ellipses when a character fades out.

Example: “I just thought maybe…”

Dialogue with action in the middle

The sentence continues after the action.

Example: “I told you,” she said, rubbing her temples, “this would happen.”

Internal thoughts (optional style)

Some writers use italics instead of quotation marks.

Example: This is a terrible idea, he thought.

Long dialogue

If a character speaks for multiple paragraphs, keep quotation marks at the beginning of each paragraph but only close them at the end of the final paragraph.

Common mistakes to avoid

will update this every few weeks/months. alternatively, here are all my tagged writing basics/refreshers

Basic Grammatical Terms ⚜ Improve your Vocabulary

Parts of Speech ⚜ Punctuation Marks ⚜ Poetic Meter

Adjective or Adverb ⚜ Conjunctive Adverbs ⚜ Tips on Adverbs

IPA Symbols ⚜ "i.e." & "e.g." ⚜ Lexical Universals

Prepositional Meanings ⚜ Prepositional Phrases

Questions Part 1 2 3 ⚜ Avoid Wordiness

Words

Commonly Confused Words Part 1 2 3

"Troublesome" Words Part 1 2 3 ⚜ Transition Words

Word Alternatives Part 1 2 3 4 ⚜ Nonsense Words

Saw a funny Facebook meme and rambled about it in a post, so came here to ramble about the same thing in depth: this right here is one of the reasons why these kinds of overly poetic descriptions are a sign of young/immature writing, but it goes far beyond getting the "wrong color." As a writer, you don't want to paint a picture; you want to paint a feeling. Your reader's brain will paint the best picture from that. Too many details, and their brain gets too busy figuring out what the room looks like to fully experience what the room feels like.

Amateur: He walked into his bedroom, polished shoes stepping on the crimson carpet as his eyes wandered over the dark brown, solid oak furniture and the burnt orange walls. Twenty feet across from him, a fire blazed in the fireplace, shades of gold and vermilion dancing behind the black, wrought-iron guard. On the wall above, pictures of family going back generations were framed in gold, and on the wall to his left, miniature chandeliers dangling over his dresser like lamps. He looked at his bed, red like the carpet but darker in shade and adorned with bronze and gold intricacies that patterned a web over its plush surface. He was so happy to be home, where things were familiar, and he walked to his bed with a faint smile.

Expert: Tired feet struck the crimson carpet and stopped, equally tired eyes wandering over the familiar shades of earth and sunset that painted the landscape of his bedroom. Across the chamber blazed a fire, warm and welcoming, which so starkly contrasted the family portraits hanging above and displaying the faces of people he barely knew. He knew the fire, though; the crackling and popping cadence that never failed to lull him to sleep when the people in the portraits couldn't even do that much. Sleep, which he desperately wanted and needed, so he turned toward the bed, spread with a comforter that matched the carpet almost perfectly, ornate in design and—most importantly by far—covering a mattress so soft and deep that he often lost consciousness the instant he fell into its warm comfort and left the world's oh-so-cold discomfort behind. He had gone so long without that. Still smiling, practically salivating, he moved toward the bed, desperate to feel like he was finally home again.

In the amateur example, you can better see the room as the author sees it—what it looks like as a room. In the expert example, you can better see the room as the CHARACTER sees it—what it FEELS like as THEIR room. And that is so, so much more important when you're trying to bring your reader not into your world, but into your character's world.

Your definition of an 'earthy, homey room' can be different from that of your readers. In the second example, you leave out the fact you see chandeliers on the wall or golden frames around the portraits when you picture it in your own head; but that's okay, because the readers know the character feels warm and safe and at home. Maybe your reader thinks an antique lamp sitting on the dresser better fits in this 'posh but warm' scenario. Maybe they think candles or oil lamps. Maybe they think a dim room that isn't lit up in any significant way by anything other than the fire.

All of those are fine, and they don't impact the story. What does impact the story, however, is if you start talking about the chandeliers, and your reader has to go, "Oh, I assumed—okay, I can see that. Chandeliers. Got it." It happens in a split second, and your reader doesn't even know they're doing it, but their brain is taking that moment to recalculate its understanding of the scene. It breaks the immersion, it breaks the flow; it's the equivalent of pressing pause during a movie so you can take in the insignificant details of the set and then hitting play and trying to get back into the emotion you were feeling before you hit pause.

(Disclaimer: I saw a post similar to this before, but I can’t find it, so here’s my version of it.)

Dialogue grammar in the English language is ridiculously complex, and can easily be messed up if you aren’t paying attention or are unfamiliar with how dialogue is structured. So, here’s a simple guide. Note that a lot more complex dialogue structure has not been included. Pay attention to punctuation.

“This is an incomplete sentence,” they say, “that continues after the dialogue tag.” e.g. “Just because you think you’re so cute and pretty,” she sneered, “doesn’t mean that you own this place.”

“This is a complete sentence.” There is an action. “This is a new sentence.” e.g. “I don’t care.” He smiled. “I don’t care at all.”

“This is a complete sentence,” and this is the relevant dialogue tag. “This is a new sentence.” e.g. “The sky is blue,” she gasped in wonder. “I never knew that.”

They do an action before they speak. “This is the dialogue.” e.g. He blinked. “Why are you like this?”

They speak, “This is the dialogue.” e.g. They whisper, “I love you.”