Language and culture are inextricably linked. Using other languages in your fiction can help to create a three-dimensional, fully-realized world for the reader, but it can also pull them out of your story and leave them bored, confused, or frustrated if you overdo it.

Like many aspects of fiction (and life), it comes down to finding the right balance. This tends to be especially difficult for those who write their own languages—and understandably so. It takes a lot of work to write a language and you want to show it off. The best way to do that, though, is to integrate it smoothly into your overall storytelling.

Freelancing is arguably the easiest way to start writing for a living. Freelancer platforms certainly make it look appealing, and while you probably don’t need me to tell you most freelancers don’t work at beach or on a lakeside dock, these ads promote a more pervasive misperception, too—that if you can write well, you can be successful as a freelance writer.

The truth is more complicated. Yes, you do need to have a certain level of writing ability to be a freelancer, but you don’t need to be a “great writer” and having that kind of advanced mastery won’t guarantee you success. There are other skills that I’d argue are equally important if you want to turn freelance writing into a sustainable full-time career. Based on my experience, these are the most important.

“What genre do you write?” On the surface that seems like a pretty straightforward question, but anyone who’s spent some time in the literary world knows it can get weirdly complicated—especially for those of us who write in the styles often shoehorned under “genre” (AKA anything that’s not literary realism).

One piece of advice new writers hear a lot is to avoid the passive voice. It’s right there in Strunk & White, rule number 14: “Use the active voice.” What many citers of this rule ignore is that they go on to say that, while the active voice is more “direct and vigorous” than passive:

This rule does not, of course, mean that the writer should entirely discard the passive voice, which is frequently convenient and sometimes necessary.

So when can you use passive voice, when should you use active voice, and why does it matter? Let’s start with the basics.