Here’s a Table of Contents of all of the Critique Technique posts to make it easier to go directly to the post you want to read.

Introductory Posts

Part 1: Critique, Technique, and Procedure

Part 1A: The Critiquer’s Mind

Part 1B: Life on the Other Side of the Critique

Part 2: Series Overview

Reader Response

Part 3: How Do You Feel?

Part 3.5: Authorial Intentions and Tracking Your Own Responses

Beginnings and Endings

Part 5: Weak or Missing Hook

Part 6: The Wrong Beginning

Part 7: Scene and Chapter Endings

Part 8: Story Endings

Characterization

Part 9: Characters and Conflict

Part 10: Poor Characterization

Part 11: Lack of Character Development

Part 12: Showing and Telling in Character Development

Part 13: Timing the Reveal

Pa...

Like the rules of spelling, punctuation, and capitalization, the rules of grammar are meant to help make a writer’s meaning clear to the reader. Unfortunately, there are even more grammar rules than there are about spelling, punctuation, and capitalization, which means that many more opportunities for a writer to mess things up.

Whole books, college courses, and web sites are devoted to these rules, so there’s no way I’m going to replicate even a tiny fraction of that material here.

Novice writers often have trouble with the basic stuff, like putting a plural form of a verb with the singular form of a noun (“she say” rather than “she says,” for example), or not being clear on who (or whom) a pronoun is referring to...

Perhaps as much as spelling, punctuation can be a wonder and a mystery to a lot of novice writers. Schools try to teach their students all sorts of punctuation rules. If you really dig into it, there are hundreds of them—and of course they all have their exceptions and caveats. After a while, many students just give up, and it shows.

I thought I had a good, workable handle on what to use, when, and how until I went to one of my friend Harvey Stanbrough’s seminars, and then the light bulb really came on. One of the best things you as a reviewer can do is buy yourself a copy of Harvey’s ebook, Punctuation for Writers. It’s available on Amazon for the Kindle, Barnes & Noble for the Nook, and Smashwords for ev...

This article begins a series on mechanical errors in writing, and with it, we’ll finish all the ones on the errors writer make. After that I’ll discuss the kinds of things a reviewer should address when the writer does well. Critique is not criticism, after all, and especially not negative, destructive criticism. It’s important to point out a writer’s successes, too.

Before I get to that, though, I need to discuss speeling, grammer, puncturation, CapitOlizaTtion—I mean, spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalization—and other usage problems, and manuscript formatting.

Spelling words correctly is a basic requirement for every writer. There’s simply no excuse for getting words wrong, unless, like I did in the paragraph above, you’re doing it intentionally...

Today is Memorial Day in the United States, one of the two holidays (two!) in which we honor and remember our military personnel, those serving today and those who have served in the past, especially those who were injured or killed in combat. As a veteran myself, I’ll be participating in a ceremony this evening. Courage in the face of mortal danger and sacrifice to it have long been—and should be!—staples of literature. James Scott Bell’s (@jamesscottbell) Of Miracles, Sacrifice and Story speak to this better than I can, so that’s where we’ll start this week’s Great Stuff.

And to my brothers and sisters in arms, thank you.

CRAFT

Nancy J. Cohen (@nancyjcohen) offers a veritable plethora of tips on how to make On-Site Research trips worth your time and expense...

Okay… deep breath and here we go. Click the Publish button aaaaand…

Welcome to the renamed and relocated Great Stuff for Writers! I hope you like the new web site and the new-ish layout. The one thing that hasn’t changed is the content: I’m still surfing the blogosphere for important and valuable information for you, my fellow writers.

If you were subscribed to the old Great Stuff from the Cochise Writers blog, I’m afraid you’ll have to resubscribe, but the links are over on the right in the sidebar. You can (re)subscribe by RSS or e-mail, or both! Of course, you can also bookmark the site or mark it as a favorite too.

This new web site is still a work in progress, so if you have any problems with it, PLEASE tell me about them...