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…
Today is the first in a new series I call Friday Feature. I thought it would be fun to interview authors and find out what their publication journey was like and wanted to offer them a free tool for marketing their debut book. Friday Feature will appear every third Friday of the month and will…
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
“Bloated, chunky, dull dialogue is a five-alarm warning to the reviewer that you can’t write salable fiction,” says James Scott Bell in his book The Art of War for Writers. Dialogue, like any other part of your novel, must move your story forward. An important part of good dialogue is the distinctive voice of each…
I want to accomplish as much as I can when I’m writing, so I utilize keyboard shortcuts. Many of these MS Word shortcuts translate over to other word processing programs such as Scrivener (the one I use). Here is a list of MS Word keyboard shortcuts to help you save time as you write your…
Take a look at the picture above. What’s the first thing that comes into your mind? Danger? A bygone era? What ever your thought was, the fact is the picture triggered that thought. That is the creativity of your mind in action. Now think about how you can use what’s in this photo in your work in…