Friday, January 12, 2007

Speaking of Writing...

Here are some links that those who are interested in writing (and I'm gonna go out a limb here and guess that if you're a blogger you fancy yourself as some sort of writer) might enjoy.

1) A Guide to Writing Well
According to Joshua Sowin (who obviously spends a good deal of time thinking about writing), the Guide is mainly a distillation of Zinsser's On Writing Well and Strunk & White's The Elements of Style, compiled as a refresher for "a stubborn and lazy memory" (his, not mine).
HT: Justin Taylor, who recommends that aspiring writers (and thus current bloggers) bookmark it.

2) Writing Tips from Ian McMillan's Writing Lab
Some British guy on the Beeb who has a writing radio show. It's quite good, actually. Anyway, here are some tips on writing (you can view them online, or download them from here). Note: they are probably the same, but just in case, look at this link and this link for alternative copies of the tips.

3) BBC's Get Writing Homepage
The BBC is spending the hard-earned quid of the likes of Warnock & The Muffin to finance stuff like this, so help them get their money's worth. There are links galore about writing and reading.

4) BBC Writer's Room Script Smart Links
Click thru one from the link above and you might end up at the BBC Writer's Room (it's a twisted path, so I've just gone ahead and done it for you). Writer's Room appears to be primarily geared towards those who would like to write for the BBC; however, two places there are more general and more helpful.

The first is a page on script formats. Anyone who's in the biz I doubt will need this, but for someone starting out, or for the invasively curious, it's interesting.

Second, if you'd like to produce said scripts yourself, the Beeb have produced some Word macros (named "Script Smart") to help with the process. Someone download them & let me know how they work--I am Wordless these days.

Update:
Tom Gilson (welcome, Tom!) added a link in the comment section, but it doesn't look like it took, so I am adding it here.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Here's a good source of language oddities and answers: