Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 4 Comments

Crutch words – WENT (part 2)

You didn’t think I forgot part 2 for this crutch word, did you? In case you missed part 1 you can find it here.

When we draft our stories, we want to get them out as fast as possible. Which tends to make things sloppy and messy. Non-writers, don’t get us wrong. It’s a need all writers have; get the story out of our heads immediately. Unfortunately, this comes at a price.

Crutch words.

When we finish our first draft, we haven’t exactly “written” anything. Technically, we have, but practically, well… it’s not readable. When we draft a story, what we’re really doing is putting our thoughts down. Writing comes after we’re finished with the first draft. That’s when we have to turn our drafts into something that won’t hurt the eyes (or the minds) of our readers. Part of this process involves removing crutch words.

One such crutch word is the past tense of the verb go (went). We love using it (and other crutch words), because it’s always available and it does the job. The thing is, readers want more than a word that just does the job. The problem with went is that it’s not descriptive enough. And so, we have a huge list of synonyms to consider. Below, is a small list of some of the available synonyms for WENT. Keep in mind that every synonym has a meaning of its own, so make sure you use the right word. And yes, I know there are more synonyms available. I will cover those in future posts.

 

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos

I am a…

It took me a while to accept it, but now that I have, I feel so much better: I am an artistic and creative person. That’s probably why I never liked most of the things I tried. None of them were related to arts. Except telling stories, creating worlds and settings, turn lies into reality, and writing fiction. Mind you, most of my academic background, with the exception of my Masters degree, is related to hard sciences (physics, chemistry, maths, geology – my first degree – cosmology, astronomy etc). Which was okay, but it never really thrilled me.

But now, I have discovered another form of art that I seem to like. Okay,ho am I kidding? A form of art I’m enthusiastic about!!! See how many exclamation marks I used there? There are a select few of you here who have had the great misfortune to have me as their beta reader. They know how much I hate exclamation marks. The words “kill it with fire, then cast it into Mt Doom,” come to mind. I believe I wrote that to the side of a friend’s manuscript, pointing at an exclamation mark he had used.

Anyway, being a writer on an extremely tight budget forced me to learn to use Photoshop. Okay, let me rephrase that. It forced me to learn to use one or two things from Photoshop (is there anyone out there who knows how to use the entire program, I wonder). And I realised something: I really like using it! (You see that? Another exclamation mark)

I enjoy creating stuff with it, and I enjoy learning new things about it. At the moment, I’m more like “monkey see, monkey do,” as far as knowing how to properly use it goes, but every single time I create something, it’s like having finished writing a new book. Like it’s Christmas all over again! (Wow! I’m going crazy with the exclamation marks today)

So, to make a long story short, I decided to start selling the few things I’ve created with Photoshop. I started an Etsy shop, and I invite you all to browse through my wares. There are not many things up yet, mainly because to create something it takes me as long as it takes me to finish editing a book. For the record, now I’m editing my cyberpunk novel AND my horror post-apocalyptic novel – yes, again – so this should be ample proof that it takes me A LOT of time to edit something.

Anyway, you can find my Etsy shop at www.etsy.com/shop/DreamInDigitalDreams. I hope you like what you see 🙂

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos

Writing Prompt 52

Everyone around me panicked and ran and trampled each other to get out, go someplace safe. Fools. What difference would it make?
I noticed a woman at the other end of the bar eyeing me, calm as a meditating monk. I threaded my way to her. “Not running for your life?” I asked.
“Nope,” she replied.
“How come?”
“You know how.”
Could she be…? My surprise must have shown, ’cause she hid a chuckle behind a sip from her drink.
“Still,” I said, “the end of the world and all. This is my fifth end of the world and I’m still enjoying it.”
“Oh, you’re a child. How sweet.” Another sip of her drink. “I got bored after the twentieth. That was millions of years ago. These primates are no longer entertaining. However, this end comes too early. Your doing?”

 

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos

Writing Prompt 51

“It’s not that bad,” Horace said.

“How would you know?” Anuk stabbed her finger on his chest. “You haven’t died a single time yet! Not once! Try dying a hundred thousand times, jumping from body to body, then tell me if it’s bad or not. Not so bad, he says… pfff!”

Horace opened and closed his mouth. His eyes glided over her. “Well, you look great in this body.” He smiled.

Anuk folded her arms and cast Horace a malevolent narrow glance. “You eye-grope me once more, I’ll show you how annoying death is right now.”

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 5 Comments

Crutch words – WENT (part 1)

When drafting a story, a book, or a poem, we tend to use words that will easily allow us to convey what we have in mind. They help us get the words out fast. It makes sense; it’s a draft, meant only for the writer and only until revisions and edits start. Past that stage, it’s best (for our readers’ sake) to change these words in favour of better and more descriptive ones.

WENT is a word writers like to use often, but one that doesn’t paint a nice picture for the reader. Below are some alternative words you can use. Keep in mind, the list of synonyms for WENT is much bigger, and I will come back to it at a later time with more words. As always, please make sure you use the right replacement at the right moment for best results. Each synonym has a meaning of its own.

 

 

Also, I changed the blog’s front page a bit. It took me hours to get the image mapping to work and to figure out how to fix the html code (I’m soooooo incompatible with such things), but I think the result is better than the old one. The question is, do you like it?