{"id":742,"date":"2013-07-11T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-11T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=742"},"modified":"2018-11-20T05:38:20","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T05:38:20","slug":"kill-redshirtsand-other-advice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=742","title":{"rendered":"Kill the Redshirts…and Other Advice"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the latest Writer’s Digest newsletter, I ran across some fun advice: 4 Things Star Trek Can Teach Us About Writing<\/a>. Lesson #1: destroy the literary equivalent of those pesky, oft-eliminated Redshirts. In fact, that’s already come in handy for me during my rewrite, especially this bit:<\/p>\n

\n
\nAnother red shirt that deserves what\u2019s coming to him is what the
\nMarshall Plan for Novelists refers to as Morse Code\u2014the overuse of dots
\nand dashes to make a character\u2019s sentences trail off. This is a common
\ntool used by many beginners, but like most tools, it has limited uses.
\nYou can\u2019t hammer concrete nails with a screwdriver, and a soldering iron
\n is practically useless for joining two pieces of wood. So go ahead and
\nlet the characters finish their sentences.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Apparently, back in 2004 when I first wrote this, my characters used to do a lot of trailing off… <\/p>\n

\n<\/a><\/div>\n

\nTamora Pierce! Elizabeth Wein! Robin LaFevers! So many of our writing heroes and blog buds are going to be taking part in SLJ’s SummerTeen 2013<\/a>. This online event takes place July 24th and it is FREE, so you have no reason not to sign up! Chat sessions! Giveaways! Author panels live on webcam, including one on Embracing Diversity! The one single reason I haven’t already signed up is that I leave the country on July 25th, rather early in the a.m., so I have a limited ability to commit to anything the previous day, but I adore all three of those ladies I already mentioned, so…we’ll see. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the latest Writer’s Digest newsletter, I ran across some fun advice: 4 Things Star Trek Can Teach Us About Writing. Lesson #1: destroy…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,18,10,86,52],"class_list":["post-742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-af","tag-happenings","tag-views","tag-web-wanderings","tag-writing-daze"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=742"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7643,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742\/revisions\/7643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}