Writing advice and tips.
When I heard New York Times best-selling author Cecil Murphey (90 Minutes in Heaven) was doing a workshop for the writers group I belong to, I wasted no time in signing up. How better to learn about writing than to be taught by a multiple, best-selling author? During the day, he taught on dialog. Here’s part of…
In his book The Art of War for Writers, James Scott Bell says, [E]very character in every scene must have an objective, otherwise he shouldn’t be there. Replace him with a chair. Review your WIP. If you find a character(s) who is superfluous? Do as Bell suggests, rewrite the scene and cut the character. Now reread the…
The benefits of membership in a writer’s organization are numerous. The benefits vary from organization to organization, but here are just a few: Submission call-outs (markets accepting stories such as Chicken Soup for the Soul) Networking with other writers Print or e-newsletters of industry news and writing techniques Discounts on organizational contests and conferences Webinars,…
Formatting your submissions according to a publication’s writer’s guidelines is essential. Finding those guidelines isn’t always easy, and even in this day of digital everything you often have to request guidelines via email. For easy reference, FreelanceWriting.com provides a database of 836 writer’s guidelines, by category. http://www.freelancewriting.com/guidelines/pages/
Point of view. Think about those words and it will help you. From whose perspective are you viewing your scene? Whose feelings and thoughts are being expressed in the scene? Example from my present WIP: Chase stared at Karl with what he hoped was a questioning, please-continue look in his blue eyes, but Karl just…
I regularly notice that writers incorrectly shift from one character’s point of view (POV) to another. That is, they give us more than one POV in the same paragraph. I know I did when I first began writing fiction, and I continued to struggle until I got my brain wrapped around what POV is. Nancy…
Readers want to see character growth and change through the course of the story. This is the character arc of your story. Character growth can be as simple as having your heroine realize she doesn’t need a man in her life to be happy, or as complex as overcoming the childhood trauma of abuse. Here…
The adjective that exists solely as decoration is a self-indulgence for the writer and a burden for the reader. … make your adjectives do work that needs to be done. —William Zinsser, On Writing Well