Dues ex machina! Only, you know, less godly… “The evil principal ultimately fell victim to the machinations of his clever senior students and their determination for a day off.” Machinate- verb intransitive verb : to plan or plot especially to do harm transitive verb : to scheme or contrive to bring about ~per Merriam-Webster
Life happens. It’s why characters in stories are important. Because that’s a representation of a life, and no life is one-dimensional or single-minded. There’s always other stuff going on. So here’s one for the character files. This is the stuff that goes on in a life that makes a person or a character behave and […]
Today’s word I’ve only heard about on the internet as a friend’s username. So I’m going to completely botch my effort at an intelligent use of the word in a complete sentence. I’m okay with this because this is a weird word but very fun. (It is such a fun word that auto-correct wants me […]
It’s Thursday. It’s the day before Friday. The weekend is almost here! Go write something!
This word is just plain fun to say. It even sounds mysterious, really. I think it is entirely underused. I know it is in my own work. “The den was forfeited to the cabal of teenagers for their D&D afternoon.” Cabal – noun 1: the artifices and intrigues of a group of persons secretly united […]
It’s the word of the day. I had to use this one at some point! Just getting it out of the way… 🙂 “Not feeling particularly verbose, she replied with only a nod of her head.” Verbose – adjective 1): containing more words than necessary : wordy ; also : impaired by wordiness 2): given […]
I learned this week that there are different levels to the dreaded Writer’s Block. Somehow or another, after a solid six months of writing non-stop, I finally hit my burn-out stage this weekend. No, really, when I say non-stop, I mean it. I’m either asleep, at work, or writing since last September. Sometimes I’m all […]
This word is ridiculously poetic and it caught my attention. I’m sure I must have heard it before, but I didn’t remember it. According to the Google graphic on the word, it was at its heyday around the year 1900, which sounds about right to me. “Who would have expected a chance meeting in an […]
A picture says a thousand words, right? But what about music? Sometimes music has lyrics to paint pictures, other times you have notes to follow instead. What’s your musical genre? What story does your favorite song tell you? Is that why it’s your favorite? Music is important, even to writers, just because it’s another form […]
Yup, that’s right folks. Veridical. That isn’t a misspelling, despite how angrily my auto-correct is trying to fix it. Personally, I think it falls under the category of “Words Not to Use” because it will very easily throw a reader out of a sentence if they’re any good at spelling. The origins of the words […]
The Coffee Writer 