Do you remember the films “The Flintstones” starring John Goodman or “The Santa Clause” starring Tim Allen? How about “I Love Trouble” with Julia Roberts or “The Shadow” with Alec Baldwin? Well, they all came out in 1994 and they all made more money than a certain Continue reading “How To Create An Enduring Bestseller (6 min read)”
The best writing advice* I ever got was to make sure my opening lines were great. To see why, look at the following opening lines:
1. “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.” Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis (1915)
2. “The way you can go isn’t the real way” Lao Tzu, Ta Te Ching (circa 500BC)
3. “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) Continue reading “36 Awesome Opening Lines Of Books”
One of the best manuals on writing better is Strunk and White’s “The Elements of Style”. Here’s a taster:
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences… Continue reading “Write Better!”