The Write Slice: Write or Wrong

So during my musings today, I made a discovery that there is an important aspect of writing that I can recognize, but I have no idea how to produce: tone. I will be taking a utopian/dystopian literature class in a couple of weeks and I'm reading some of the novels in preparation for it. I didn't realize how much dystopian literature I had read until addressed so directly by this class. I was reading Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Fascinating work. In describing the novel to my husband, I realized that (unlike a lot of dystopian literature), Huxley was not specifically creating a dystopian society; instead he was satirizing/warning about where he thought his society was heading. The tone of the novel is somehow different. But I can't figure out how. I can tell there is a difference, and intellectually I know that it has to do a lot with word choice, but I can't tell you what words are creating the tone. To me, it all just seems to be written matter-of-factly, a ...

Congratulations to all of you who have either graduated from college/university, or are about to graduate from high school. It's a big accomplishment. I just graduated myself with my MA in English, and it has been a blast. I am sad that I'm already done because there are so many other classes I want to take. It has been a thrilling and exciting ride. I've honed my craft, had the opportunity to explore genres other than the typical academic ones, and been exposed to a variety of works of literature. I've begun to understand the reason why certain literature lives forever, and I can start to apply those principles into my own writing. I've learned from professors, books, and colleagues. I wouldn't change my experience one bit. So not only is this a shout-out to the graduates, but it's also a shout-out for higher education. If you are debating on attending college, do it. If you are debating on earning your Master's degree, do it. You can learn things f...