How to Avoid Being Fooled by Bad Writing Advice

How to Avoid Being Fooled by Bad Writing Advice

On realizing your life isn't over

Open your eyes girl! 

Push away the grime staining your brain. 

Acknowledge, 

aquire, 

respect. 

Determination won't save you now. 

Sheer obstinateness grants you grace. 

On avoiding the passive voice

I struggle with avoiding the passive voice. It's said that a writer who uses the passive voice is insecure about their work, and maybe their right, nevertheless, her is my attempt to begin the exodus of passive voice from my writing. It's rocky, but it will get better. After all, this is a journey isn't it? Perhaps this marks the beginning of me settling into confidence. Anyway, heres the passage:

Jack sits on the bed, his feet hang over the side. He looks past his knobby knees like a person looking down the face of a cliff- in awe and fear. The light from the window creeps over the windowsill and crawls across the floor but still Jack stares. Still Jack sits. The typewriter stands silent, cold. The words are only a whisper in the back of his mind. Jack can stare as hard as he likes . . . the story will not come back. Shane will not come back. No one comes back. 

The sunlight gave up on Jacks room and slunk back over the windowsill.

Tifling

Shard is a tifling rogue who cares for nothing and no one but herself and her livelihood. Her real name is unknown. Her appearance is the only form of identification is the spiked, shard-like feathers that stick out of her head. Her weapon of choice keeps her hands clean and disposes of you from a distance, yes she uses a crossbow, and a heavy one. When she lands a blow,  it will be the first, and last you will know of her presence. Now don’t get me wrong, she can’t avoid the occasional up close and personal encounter, her greatest feat was the time she squared off with a ten foot Guantar. Of course she angered it, she dared it to charge, and once it did she slid between its legs and stabbed it in the tailbone. When she wiped the blood off her poisoned dagger the massive things children whimpered and mewed in sorrow.  “How will we eat?” they cry at the back of her shrinking form. She does not answer.