Reference / The language of the craft
A thought to understand.
A term to explore.
Look up a craft term, follow its sources, or bring an idea back to your own writing. Start with the question in front of you.
70 terms to explore
Cutting
Hedges
Lights the qualifiers that drain force a drop at a time — very, quite, rather, somewhat, a bit.
Adverbs
Lights most -ly adverbs — the words propping up verbs.
Scaffolding
Flags “there is / there are” openers holding the real subject offstage.
Tighten
Reworks a selection so every word earns its place — real concision, restructuring allowed.
Redundant Pairs
Flags doubled meanings — “end result,” “advance planning,” “exact same.”
The Short Word
Flags inflated words and phrases where a short one does the work — “utilize,” “in order to.”
Start Where It Starts
Delete the warm-up before the piece actually begins.
Murder Your Darlings
Find the passage you're proudest of and ask whether it serves the piece — or your performance.
The Ten Percent
Cut a fixed fraction of the draft without losing anything the piece needs.
Detail
Clichés
Underlines stock phrases seen too often in print.
Make It Concrete
Proposes the specific in place of the category — “sleet” for “bad weather” — from your own material only.
Expand
Builds out a compressed passage with a concrete moment or sharper articulation — substance, never padding.
Show the Evidence
Replace the emotion-label with the evidence that produces it.
The One Detail
Find the single particular that implies the whole.
Up and Down the Ladder
Move deliberately between the concrete floor and the abstract view — avoid the mushy middle.
Past the Eyes
Ground a scene in a sense that isn't sight.
Numbers With Faces
Scale a statistic to something the reader can feel.
Name the Names
Use the real, particular name where a generic does less.
Lessons
Door Closed, Door Open
Write the first draft for yourself; revise with the audience in the room.
Bird by Bird
Shrink the work to one small frame you can actually face.
The Bad First Draft
Write it fast and badly on purpose; its only job is to exist.
Re-See Before You Polish
Between drafts, ask the structural questions before touching sentences.
Copy It by Hand
Type out passages you admire; then imitate their structure with your own subject.
Openings & endings
Sharpen Opener
Rewrites the opening so it drops the reader into their moment — no throat-clearing.
Sharpen Close
Rewrites the ending so the last lines land — an image or a turn, never a recap.
One Person First
Open on one person, one moment — then widen to the general.
Find the Buried Lead
Search your middle for the sentence that should have opened the piece.
Stop at the Stop
End at the natural stopping point — no recap, no bow.
Keep the Promise
Your title and first lines set tone, scope, and genre — don't break the contract.
Rhythm
Repeated Words
Flags a word used three or more times in one paragraph.
Land It Short
Reworks a passage so the key point arrives in one short sentence after longer ones.
The Drumbeat
Mix short, medium, and long sentences; break runs of the same length.
The Deliberate Fragment
Use a verbless sentence on purpose. Like this.
Begin Again
Open successive clauses or sentences with the same words, three or more times.
End Again
End successive clauses on the same words.
The Rule of Three
Set parallel items in threes, weightiest last.
Set It Against Itself
Put opposing ideas in matching frames.
The Mirror Line
Say it, then say it reversed.
Pacing Valves
Drop the conjunctions to accelerate; stack them to slow down.
The Score
Choose your stops for tempo — period, dash, colon, and semicolon each play differently.
Read It Aloud
Read the piece with your actual voice and mark every stumble.
Sentences
First Five Words
Flags sentences whose subject and verb arrive late — a long wind-up before the actor acts.
Buried Verbs
Finds nominalizations — the action hiding inside an abstract noun (“made a decision”).
Landings
Flags sentences that end on a weak word — a preposition or qualifier in the emphasis slot.
Passive Voice
Finds to-be + past-participle constructions where the actor has left the stage.
Long Sentences
Marks sentences past 25 words; past 40 they escalate.
End-Weight
Reorders a chosen sentence so the word that matters lands last.
Main Clause First
Land the main clause early, then let the modifiers trail rightward.
One Working Idea
Give each sentence one job; split the ones doing two.
Matching Parts
Put coordinate ideas in matching grammatical form.
The Held Breath
Occasionally withhold the main clause until the end of the sentence.
Shape
Suggest Transition
Rebuilds a joint between sections so it bridges naturally — no announced machinery.
The Why-Now Paragraph
After the opening scene, write one paragraph naming what this piece is and why it matters now.
Scene and Summary
Alternate dramatized moments with compression — drop into scene when it matters most.
Plant and Pay
Plant early what the ending needs; cut plants that never pay.
The Focus Sentence
State in one sentence what the piece is about — then cut what doesn't serve it.
Coins on the Path
Place small rewards through the middle — an image, a story, a surprise.
Time Is the Spine
Default to time order unless you have a named reason not to.
The Paragraph Is a Room
Give each paragraph one job — and use a short one as a spotlight.
Draw the Shape First
Sketch the piece's structure before you draft — order is a design decision.
Story structures
The quiet turn
Four moves: set a scene, deepen it, pivot to something that seems unrelated, then land where the pivot makes the whole thing mean more.
The plain arc
Three movements — setup, complication, resolution — with two beats each. The simplest shape that still rises and lands.
The full arc
The same three movements with room for a real middle — the act most stories starve.
The journey out and back
Leave the known world, be tested and changed in the unknown one, and return carrying something the ordinary world needs.
The full beat sheet
Fifteen beats from opening image to closing image — the most granular map here, with a stated theme, a B story, and a dark night before the finale.
Voice
Rewrite in My Voice
Reshapes a passage so it reads unmistakably as you — grounded in the voice samples you've shared.
The Narrated Realization
Flags “I realized…” and its kin — the epiphany told instead of shown.
One Reader
Picture one person; write the piece to them.
Let “Said” Be Invisible
Attribute dialogue with said, occasionally asked — little else.
Underplay the Peak
At the big moment, remove the intensifiers and let the plain statement stand.