Notebooks: The One Item Every Writer Needs
Writing notebooks from other creative people can inspire us to keep track of our own creative thoughts. On the tab called Writing Notebooks, I lay out the general idea of keeping a writing notebook, but I want to go into a little more detail here. That’s because it’s so important for writers at any stage […]
Are You Ready for Your First Book Festival?
Follow my blog with Bloglovin Your book is out. Now, you have a chance to sell directly to readers. One of the best places to do that is a book festival. The Payson Book Festival in Payson, AZ provided an opportunity for me to see how other writers sold their books. Next time I try […]
Writing Notebooks: Are You Keeping One?
Writing notebooks are an integral part of a writer’s daily practice. If you keep a writing notebook, you’ll have an infinite source of fresh material to generate stories or to help you recall details of a place you visited. Here’s a visual example of how I use my notebooks. I had scheduled a writing getaway […]
Historical Fiction’s Biggest Pitfalls
If you’re writing historical fiction, don’t fall into the info-dumping trap. You love all those bits and pieces of info you’ve discovered, but your reader will have a hard time keeping an eye on the story if you can’t restrain yourself. Limit yourself to one or two protagonists–one, preferably. Let that person experience life as […]
Characters and Making Them Real
Photo Source All fiction revolves around characters, such as Mr. Peggotty in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield. Characters must engage us emotionally, or they become like wallpaper, flattened figures we don’t really care about. Alternately, they can appear cartoonish, as in the illustration above. Have you heard the phrase “well drawn” used about certain characters? That’s […]
The ABCs of Your Novel’s Core Conflict
Photo Source You could plot a novel around this picture. A man, a woman. Love, followed by its opposite. Who will take home the money? How will each on handle the hurt and sense of failure? Before we start thinking about plot, let’s see if we can “sum up” the core conflict of this story. […]
Details, Details, Details!
Details offer readers a chance to live vicariously in a world far different from their own. How much detail do you, the writer, need to provide? A lot. And you must keep on feeding the reader’s “minds eye” as the scene progresses. Why? Because without meaningful details, readers experience a visual “white-out,” like the white-out […]
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