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Gone With The Wind. Scarlett O'Hara is pretty noxious and manipulative.

When I was in university I smoked a pipe for a few months. Fortunately, it didn't take. Not only was it unhealthy, but it was also very messy. Bits of tobacco, ash, cleaners in disgusting condition,...

Most people read faster than they talk. Or that narrators talk. I don't regard that as a quirk.

What may be my personal quirk is that I like well-crafted prose that sounds good when read aloud. I...

Read James Joyce's Dubliners, Hemingway's short stories, Raymond Carver, Alice Munro, John Cheever, etc. etc.

Some writers stuff their prose with excess and others pare theirs down to the skeleton. The Sun Also Rises was published in a time of mostly overstuffed prose, and its simple prose was a revelation...

Thanks for the explanation, Warsaw.
It may be true that most literature consists of retelling old stories. There may be totally original stories out there, but they probably tend to be rather...

Warsaw1965, can you be a little more clear? I don't know what you mean by "books especially are most blatantly reproductions." Reproductions of what? And what do you mean by the "macro level"?

Miyako, you have asked questions like this before. No offense, but it seems to me that you have read a lot of books about writing and are treating everything they say as gospel.

My advice to you...

Your tip was not "use them at your peril"; it was "never use adverbs." The boldface was in your original.

You have to watch out that, when encouraging a novice writer to use vivid images, you're...

I don't understand what you're talking about. Can you give an example of how this tool might be used?

This is a ridiculous statement. Adverbs are part of the available vocabulary and should be used wherever appropriate. Saying that not using adverbs makes one a better writer is like saying that not...

Are you saying that Jane Austen was Chaucer's mother? Or that you, possibly, might be a character in one of her novels? Bastable Park, perhaps?

I've read Atlas Shrugged several times. Do I recommend it? Yeah. I think it's a fun read (maybe I'm weird that way ...)

Do I agree with Ayn Rand's philosophy? No. I think she was a kind of a...

He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam-Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher - the Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum.

- Kim, Rudyard...

I think Ayn Rand gets a lot of arguing going.

If you get past the fifth page, you're a better man than I am.

English is my first language. I used to be able to speak passable French (I went to school in Montreal) but I haven't spoken French in over thirty years, so it's pretty much all gone.

The advantage the author has over the critic is that the author knows his intent. Whether or not he achieved his intent is another question, but at least he knows his intent. Critics don't even have...

There are two issues involved in the original post. First, does Fred Phelps have the right to say whatever foul garbage he wants? The answer to that is yes.

Second, does he have the right to say...

I use Word on many docs over 20,000 word, and I don't find it any more clunky on long docs than on shorter ones.

But I might just have a high tolerance for clunkiness.

I actually managed, with a mighty effort, to make it through the first two pages of Finnegans Wake. I'd love to finish it someday, but I'd need thirty more IQ points and fluency in about six more...

In the bad old days before I had a place with air conditioning, I would lie in a cold bath for about 45 minutes before I could go to bed. I couldn't sleep without draining all that excess heat out of...

The classics I have most fun reading are the ones I read and liked as a kid: Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, some Edgar Allan Poe, some Rudyard Kipling (Kim, Jungle Books, etc.), and Jules Verne.
...

I grew up in a rural area north of Toronto, and there was always firewood to split. Whenever I got frustrated or angry, I could go outside and split wood. This involved hitting things as hard as I...

The original question is kind of silly. It implies that novels and biographies are written for the same purpose, and they are not. Generally, biographies are written to provide factual information on...