{"id":1485,"date":"2016-09-06T22:00:02","date_gmt":"2016-09-07T02:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.normfriedman.com\/blog\/?p=1485"},"modified":"2018-07-05T16:00:23","modified_gmt":"2018-07-05T20:00:23","slug":"60-second-tip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.normfriedman.com\/blog\/60-second-tip\/","title":{"rendered":"60-Second Tip"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"3642425935_cfec6feca7\"<\/a><\/p>\n

New & improved?<\/h2>\n

As the blog enters year 3, I am markedly shortening my weekly writing tips, but you can always browse http:\/\/www.normfriedman.com\/blog\/ in search of meatier entries. Each of my first 102 posts is about a three- or four-minute read.<\/p>\n

Today’s challenge<\/h2>\n

See if you can make one quick refinement to the opening sentence of a movie synopsis. (We’ll look at the second, more problematic, sentence next week.)<\/p>\n

Tyler is a young man who is desperately seeking direction from a world that seems to have abandoned him. <\/em><\/p>\n

I don’t see any errors, but we do have a weakness here. Because the verb “to be,” in all its forms, has no sizzle, let’s fix Tyler is<\/span> a young man who is<\/span> ….<\/em> Do you see the remedy? We can just delete who is<\/em> and voila!\u00a0Tyler is a young man desperately seeking direction from a world that seems to have abandoned him.<\/em><\/p>\n

Today’s tip:<\/strong> Watch out for constructions like “who is,” “that were,” and “which have been.” They often can be eliminated.<\/p>\n

You can learn more about my workshops on writing in the workplace, individual\u00a0coaching, editing, and handbook \u2013 100+ Instant Writing Tips<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 at\u00a0http:\/\/www.normfriedman.com\/index.shtml<\/a>. Thank you.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New & improved? As the blog enters year 3, I am markedly shortening my weekly writing tips, but you can always browse http:\/\/www.normfriedman.com\/blog\/ in search of meatier entries. Each of my first 102 posts is about a three- or four-minute … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,10],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.normfriedman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1485"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.normfriedman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.normfriedman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.normfriedman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.normfriedman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1485"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.normfriedman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1514,"href":"http:\/\/www.normfriedman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1485\/revisions\/1514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.normfriedman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.normfriedman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.normfriedman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}