Category Archives: fiction
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Ups and Downs and Louds and Softs
1September 19, 2019 by bradcharlesbeals
“This writing that you do, that so thrills you, that so rocks and exhilarates you, as if you were dancing …
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That Elusive Stack of Dimes
Leave a commentApril 21, 2018 by bradcharlesbeals
As research for a character I was developing a few years ago, I tried my hand at blacksmithing. It …
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Fear and Trembling and the Writing Process
Leave a commentApril 7, 2018 by bradcharlesbeals
We’re reading the Romantics now in Brit Lit. One of the drums they beat (and they beat a lot of …
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Epistolaries at Dawn
Leave a commentMarch 20, 2018 by bradcharlesbeals
Imitating another writer’s voice (as I wrote about here) requires time spent in the work of that writer, but picking …
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Two (more) Uses for the Indirect Quote
Leave a commentMarch 13, 2018 by bradcharlesbeals
To speak or not to speak — that is the question. Last week I looked at the indirect quote as …
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Indirect Quotation as a Breather
Leave a commentMarch 10, 2018 by bradcharlesbeals
For the bi-lingual, speaking in the second language can be tiring. There’s a scene in John LeCarre’s novel The Russia …
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Fiction and Random Things
Leave a commentMarch 6, 2018 by bradcharlesbeals
verisimilitude: n; the appearance or semblance of truth. From our puny perspectives, the world around us is everyday filled with the …
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Voice and Imitation
2February 28, 2018 by bradcharlesbeals
The athlete doesn’t train to get good at training. He doesn’t ride a stationary bike or spend time in the …
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Playing Tag: 3 attribution alternatives for cleaner dialogue
Leave a commentFebruary 23, 2018 by bradcharlesbeals
Attributing quotation to the right speaker is essential for clarity, but the traditional tag (he said…she said…said the butler) is …
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A Present Tense Confessional
Leave a commentFebruary 21, 2018 by bradcharlesbeals
Recently I concluded that the novel I’m working on would work better in the past tense, so I spent a …
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