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The Writer’s Toolbox
Tips, talk and techniques
for students and teachers of writing
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Warm-up exercise: Scar
Writing Exercises
Writer's Toolbox
Freewrite for 10 minutes about a scar or scars: your own or someone else’s.
—MS
About the Toolbox
Sign up for free class sets of Geist
Geist home page
Workshops
In the toolbox
Interview with Mary Schendlinger
Acronyms and otherwise
Gerunds and participles: Avoid ING words
Going further with farther
Sentences: A sentence is a thought, not a warehouse
How does narrative die?
Narrative exercise: Birthday
Morale exercise: Real writers
Trim those articles and prepositions
Warm-up exercise: Scar
Issues—the word
Living vs. being based
Warm-up exercise: Eyes shut
Narrative: Six principles and some examples
Warm-up exercise: Television weeping
Phrases and clauses
Verbs: Avoid the quiet and the copulative
Trump and trumpery
The handy dandy 5-W sentence
Function shift
"And" or "but" at the start of a sentence
Name your agent
Warm-up exercise: Lunch
Sentence fragments
Dialogue: Keep it simple
Find yourself, but don’t say so
Sentences: Simple, fragment, run-on
Sentences: Long is beautiful
Beware of getting involved
The order of things
