Being a Sr. Technical Writer for Big Blue, the argument is vital. Making lists explicit removes all confusion. And the court backs up our practice. https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/09/us/dairy-drivers-oxford-comma-case-settlement-trnd/index.html

This film is playing in the local cinema. I was planning to see it on Thursday night but we had some vigorous storms come through and I ended up staying home. It was the right thing to do but I missed seeing it again on the big screen. ;(

I can see the cause of the confusion.

Competing in NaNoWriMo fixed that for me. It's like a switch in my brain. When I'm writing a draft, I'm dealing with conceptual things and I try to get them down in whatever raw Draft condition, and stopping to edit myself pulls me out of that creative state. I've seen mega blockbuster authors say the same thing. I know when I sit down the goal is word-count, not perfection. Editing is a different skill and I put on my editor's hat after I write a complete Draft.

And also because he was a gifted storyteller.

In today's SoCal Christian Writer's Conference, my friend Mike Duran talked at length about how to write for the mainstream from a Christian worldview. In this slide, he references a quote from author Tom Pawlik.

I followed these points. re: 7, in The Matrix, in the final battle scene, Neo finally lets go and uses the matrix itself to defeat Agent Smith, becoming more than human in the process. re: 8, he's saying that the ending of a battle isn't when the fighting is over, it's when the protagonist deals with the aftermath of the struggle, the resolution of the story. He's saying that fights have consequences, both bad and good, and the protag has to be aware of them, you don't just cut to black.

The Critique Forum is password-protected and you can post there safely, your submissions will not be searchable in any way.

David Farland shares some really practical notes about how to write compelling fight scenes. https://mailchi.mp/xmission/david-farlands-writing-tips-opening-well-610418

I no longer join writer's groups because it's been one amateur telling others what's wrong with their work. I now belong to a SHEG, Super Hardcore Editing Group, which evaluates manuscripts primarily on Story Grid principles, if scenes have the Inciting Incident in the right place, whether scenes are turning on the correct values, and so on. In our meeting last night, I found that the first scene of my rewritten first chapter was burying the lede and pushing the Inciting Incident later in the manuscript than optimal. I moved that scene out and the beginning pops. There's more information about these kinds of editing groups here: https://annehawley.net/anne-learns-to-write/

I admit I'm a little guilty of #1. https://www.betabooks.co/blog/post/5-ways-authors-sabotage-themselves

How to use scene entry and exit hooks to improve the flow of your manuscript. https://fictionary.co/journal/make-the-scenes-in-your-novel-flow-and-capture-readers/

<humor> </humor>

My error. The Presidential election is November 3rd, not the 11th. Edited.

I'm not a Democrat nor a Biden supporter but his published position differs from this rather frothy reading of a statement where he's trying to curry favor for supporting Alphabet issues. In this statement, he appears to be trying to curry favor with the Evangelical base. This being politics, nobody should be surprised by that, nor read too much into it. THE BIDEN PLAN FOR SAFEGUARDING AMERICA’S FAITH-BASED COMMUNITIES https://joebiden.com/safeguarding-americas-faith-based-communities/ I'm seeing the same agitation from Right-leaning sources trying to rouse Christians into a lather. Here's Scott Adams flogging the faithful on Twitter. (He did the same thing in 2016, so this is nothing new for Adams.) It would be good for all of us here to pray, take a deep breath, and recognize that bad actors from both sides (from many sides!) are trying to whip Christians into a frenzy. It would be good if we didn't fall for that. God is sovereign and will remain on His throne, and our marching orders will be the same on November 4th: love God, love our neighbor as ourselves, and make disciples for Jesus Christ.