Writing Teardown

This week's exercise is to create a complex sentence within a paragraph prompt. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are short sentences and long sentences and simple sentences and complex sentences. This week we discuss why and how to use complex sentences.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pauses serve specific functions in sentences. This exercise will help you identify them.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Commas are the bane of many new writers. We know the rules, but the rules often mess up how a sentence sounds. Can we break this rule? What do pauses in sentence do, anyway? This week we discuss how to shape the rhythm of a sentence using pauses.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week's writing exercises cover simile, metaphor, and rhythm in terms of paragraph construction. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode goes over the basic elements of poetic prose and how they can be used to create a more powerful experience for your readers. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

An exercise to go over the effective and appropriate use of run on sentences and sentence fragments as part of paragraph construction. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode goes over the nature of breaking grammatical rules at the sentence level--the when and why. Specific examples of run-on sentences and sentence fragments are examined. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What role does the sentence play as you are writing your story? What are the important goals it achieves? This week we look at the role of the sentence as we begin a series of episodes on sentence construction. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode Jake presents four short exercises to provide a better understanding the goal of writing a paragraph. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, we discuss what role the paragraph plays in story telling, a foundational piece that acts as the glue that binds a story together.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode Jake provides a two step exercise to build and then revise paragraphs while maintaining it's rhythm and cadence. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There is one rule for rhythm in paragraph construction: Keep the reader engaged. There is one guideline: Avoid repetition. This week Jake goes over both the guideline and its exceptions in constructing engaging paragraphs.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Three exercises to help you practice putting together paragraphs that deliver the key thought or effect you want to achieve.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this first of several lessons going over paragraph construction, Jake talks about the fundamental nature of paragraphs: Delivering a single thought, action, emotion, or mood. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Two short exercises to help you grasp the concepts of writing wit into your dialogue along with taking strong dialogue and adding style.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode Jake discusses how can you imbue your dialogue with wit and also how to create lyrical dialogue that reflects style.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Now that you better understand using exposition in dialogue, here is a writing exercise to practice.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The most powerful way to deliver exposition is with dialogue, but it is also difficult. This episode outlines how to handle the power and danger in using dialogue for exposition. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this writing exercise, you'll practice delivering critical information via dialogue in a way that sounds realistic. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Often, dialogue sounds unrealistic because the writer forces information that is unrealistic or excludes information that provides needed context. This episode discusses the importance of managing context in dialogue.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

With some guidance from Jake, here is an exercise to help you better understand and improve the cadence and rhythm of your dialogue via your word and sentence choices. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A detailed look at how word choice and sentence construction affects the realism of dialogue. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this bonus episode Jakes discusses what makes a writer. How do you know if you have what it takes? What does it take? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

An exercise to help you assess how you hear dialogue on the page and then guidance on how to work to improve it. The Google DeepMind text-to-speech engine is mentioned as a resource. You can find it here.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Do you hear dialogue in your head? Does it match the dialogue when you speak it out loud? If you don't hear the dialogue in your head, how can you get past that? This episode breaks down rhythm and cadence in dialogue in simple terms: How it sounds. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A few more comments on real v. real-ish, with a simple writing exercise to get you comfortable with writing dialogue. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jake introduces the Writing Teardown podcast and starts with a discussion of how dialogue doesn't need to sound like you hear in real life, as real life speaking doesn't read or sound strong on the page or on the screen. The key is to create dialogue that sounds "real-ish"—idealized and efficient, yet still sounding real.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Why another writing podcast? Jake outlines tearing down writing into its component parts so that you can adapt the tools to your imagination, rather than limit your imagination to the tools.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.