Gail Tagarro

How Exposition Can Help You Avoid the Great Literary Sin of Infodumping

Exposition is a difficult aspect of writing to master, and also one of the most pivotal to the success of your story. Done right, the various elements of your story flow together seamlessly—and done wrong, it can cause the whole thing to fall apart. At its worst, exposition can veer off into the dreaded territories

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Perfecting Past, Present, and Future: Verb Tenses Made Easy (Part II)

If ever there was a subject deserving of a two-parter, it’s verb tense. Last time, we gave an overview of the three primary tenses and the four grammatical aspects at play in each of them. What we didn’t do, however, was break down each of the specific combinations of tenses and aspects and their use cases.

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Looking For Reasons to Keep Writing and Not Throw In the Towel? Look No Further!

Many of us who sit down to write do so because we feel compelled to in some way, whether it be out of enthusiasm for things that we’ve read, a passion for sharing knowledge, or some other force that has driven us to create. However powerful that driving force may be, as things become difficult—and

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What Can You Learn From Reading Inside (and Outside) of Your Comfort Zone?

If you’ve spent any amount of time looking for advice on how to improve your writing, you’ve almost certainly been told how important it is to be an active and critical reader. It’s a ubiquitous response for a reason; if you don’t know what good writing looks like, it’s all but impossible to recreate it

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Perfecting Past, Present, and Future: Verb Tenses Made Easy (Part I)

Verb tense. No matter how many writing courses we take, or how much we think we understand it, when the time comes to put pen to paper, we can still find ourselves unsure of which to deploy in certain circumstances. Sometimes, we are sure, and we don’t realise we’re wrong until our manuscript comes back from

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What It Means to Think Like a Writer, and How It Can Help Perfect Your Practice

The average manuscript is somewhere around 80,000 words in length. If you’re like me and, even in your thirties, are still measuring every length of writing against the 700-word essays you were made to write in high school, that’s a little over 114 poorly referenced essays on topics you didn’t really care about. If those

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How Getting to Know the Basics of Psychology Can Drastically Improve Your Writing

At a glance, there doesn’t seem to be much of a connection between psychology and writing. What could the scientific study of the human mind possibly have to do with your whimsical tale about sentient, shapeshifting dolphins? In a word … everything! One of the basic tenets of a considered writing practice is knowing exactly

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