Category Archives: MFRW blog challenge

Contemplating That Mistake #MFRWauthor #blogchallenge #amwriting

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Welcome to Week 4 of the MFRW blog challenge. Blogging is an opportunity for authors to connect with readers. Despite being fiction writers, blogging is an entirely different style of writing and often stumps us. Our challenge is designed to help our authors blog consistently, thoughtfully and with purpose. Anyone can join at any point in the challenge… FOLLOW THIS LINK TO LEARN MORE AND JOIN THE CHALLENGE.

This week’s prompt is “Sorry Editor! My Common Writing Mistakes”.

Hm, what are my common writing mistakes?

Well, one of them is using the same words and/or actions over and over and over. We have a running joke in my critique group about what the word of the week was, the one that appeared more often than needed.

Apparently, the word that is my favorite word. Even more than very. I can’t believe how many times I use that in a manuscript. Some can be easily deleted without changing the meaning of a sentence, but sometimes I find myself rewriting in hopes of finding another way to express myself that doesn’t involve a that or two.

Kissing couple

Kissing couple –© bibacomua

And then there’s the same action over and over, and we see this in a lot of books. How many times can the hero run his hand through his hair? How often can the heroine let out the breath she didn’t know she was holding. How many times can the hero cup the heroine’s head before the reader wants to throw the book across the room? How many ways are there to describe a kiss? Two pairs of lips coming together. Well, if you write romance, there had better be an infinite number of ways to describe kissing. And other intimate encounters.

I write pretty clean, so grammar and spelling isn’t much of an issue for me. I start with dialogue, and sometimes end up with a page of “talking heads” with lots of white space but not much action, emotion or inner thought interspersed. My critique group points out when I’ve rushed through a scene like that. (And there’s another that!)

To learn more about other common writing mistakes, click on the linky list below.

Linda

Binge Watching in 2017 #MFRWauthor #Blog Challenge

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I joined the MFRW 2017 Blog Challenge. The idea is to do a themed blog every Friday, and this week’s prompt is “TV Shows I Binge”. Normally I’d have trouble with this prompt because I don’t generally binge watch, except for Outlander.

However, I missed the opening of the fall TV season last year due to being out of the country, so I’ve had no choice but to binge watch in order to catch up on the shows I like. My first choice was Grey’s Anatomy, a show I’ve watched from the beginning, despite its ups and downs. I remember years ago watching a medical show, probably ER, when my husband wandered into the room, saw them operating on someone and said, “Your mother died of a brain tumor and you’re watching this?” I just shrugged. I didn’t point out that I wasn’t the one with a major medical phobia. He wouldn’t have watched under any circumstances.

Next I turned to some of the new shows to see what I liked. My two favorites are Timeless–because time travel!–and Designated Survivor. I love both of these shows. It’s fun to see the characters in Timeless (NBC) hopping from one historical period to another each week while trying to catch the handsome but dastardly Garcia Flynn, played by Goran Visjnic. (Had to look up how to spell his name.) I’ve been in love with Goran since he played Luca in ER. Matt Lanter’s Wyatt isn’t hard to look at either!

US CapitolIf you like complex suspenseful TV shows, Designated Survivor (ABC) is fascinating. Kiefer Sutherland plays Tom Kirkman, the HUD secretary, who is the designated survivor from the president’s cabinet during the State of the Union speech. The idea is to have someone in the line of succession survive in case of catastrophe. In the pilot, the Capitol building suddenly explodes during the inauguration, and Tom is rushed from his “undisclosed location” to the White House where he is sworn in as president. Maggie Q plays an FBI agent who is trying to figure out who blew up the capital, a quest that gets more dangerous the closer she gets to the truth. I can’t wait for the show to start up again.

For laughs, I binge watched The Good Place (NBC) starring Kristen Bell and Ted Danson. Kristin Bell’s character Eleanor died and accidentally ended up in the Good Place instead of the Bad Place. Her attempts to become a better person are hilarious and heartwarming. I’m really enjoying the show.

And lately I binge watched the new show This Is Us, also on NBC. This show is an innovative and heartwarming family drama about the Big Three, a set of twins and their adopted brother, all born on their dad’s birthday. There’s been a lot of critical acclaim for this show, and Chrissy Metz, who plays Kate, was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress. I think she should have won.

And yes, I know this isn’t true binge watching because I didn’t wait for a whole season, but I had to get caught up! I still have a bunch of shows I haven’t watched this season.

What have you been watching, or binge watching lately?

Linda

Click on the linky list below for more binge TV posts.