Friday Five: top 5 writing tips from literary experts

What some of this year’s ‘Friday Five’ participants shared with me

Over the past year, I’ve invited dozens of writers, editors, and others in the literary/writing/publishing community to take part in a “Friday Five” feature. This involves a five-question email interview with the subjects (see links to all interviews). One question I ask of all interviewees is, “What advice do you have for other writers or aspiring writers?” I do this for selfish reasons, because I’m always looking for ideas and inspiration. But I hope the responses also help others who are wanting to improve their writing.

For this end-of-year piece, I’ve selected five bits of advice from the nineteen interviews of 2024. Here they are:

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A funny thing about writing funny things

Writing humor is harder than it looks

During my university PR/marketing career, I got to work with many talented people, including one of the funniest writers I’ve ever read. But the work being what it was — writing mostly about academics and their research, all very serious stuff — this writer didn’t have many opportunities to let his humor shine through. That is, until we decided to start a blog to highlight an annual tradition that brought hundreds of alumni back to our campus every month. We put this guy in charge of it and turned him loose.

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