Using the death or abuse of an animal as an objective correlative? Maybe those ellipses in your dialogue should be em-dashes? Describing a location or a moment using an adjective-adjective-noun construction (e.g. the big, beautiful lake)? Some of our writerly ticks and tendencies are so ubiquitous that an editor may pass over a story or essay simply for the fact that they've seen the same missteps time and again. In this session, we'll examine some of the most common contemporary writerly cliches and discuss strategies for editing them out of work prior to submitting them to journals and publishers.
Nate Brown is a Baltimore based fiction writer and editor whose stories and essays have appeared in the Iowa Review, Mississippi Review, Five Chapters, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Publisher's Weekly, Lithub, and Barrelhouse. He has received scholarships and fellowships from the... Read More →