Writing

Posts on the craft of writing

Villainy without Melodrama and Tantrums

Every story needs an antagonist, but can you have villainy without melodrama and tantrums? Listen to the audio version on […]

Engaging stories come out of the choices characters make. Or as Sue Brown Moore advocates, never stop asking ‘why?’ Listen

What really makes a story is the interplay between internal versus external plot. I upset some folks when I say

The next round of editing, and I encounter the return of the Crutch Words. All of those verbal ticks, habits

I rediscovered the ScriptShark Critique Sheet from 2009. It’s another useful tool by which to evaluate your manuscript. Listen to

Our writers’ group challenge for November was First Five Words: come up with the opening line of a novel in

A revelation about my fantasy series: I’m the author as translator. Put another way, my characters don’t speak English… Listen

For me, the hardest part of writing fiction is fixing the prose that defies editing. In my head, my prose

I’ve found multiple sources of the Story Premise that pitches the novel. Longer than a simple logline, shorter than either

Abigail Perry’s Seven Key First chapter Questions are touchstones. They apply not only to opening chapters, but to every chapter