What is your story’s main problem or conflict? What’s going to be the most dramatic event/moment in your protagonist’s arc? Have you staged it in act 2 or 3? Are other characters in the story going to have a character arc? How many subplots are in the story? All necessary? How many will be tied […]

Registrations are still being accepted for the Making It in Tough & Changing Times Conference on January 28th through the 27th. Contact me. Seriously helpful information to improve your craft and propel your career.

From Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles “This fertile and sheltered tract of country, in which the fields are never brown and the springs never dry, is bounded on the south by the bold chalk ridge that embraces the prominences of Hambledon Hill, Bulbarrow, Nettlecombe-Tout, Dogbury, High Stoy, and Bubb Down. The traveller from the coast, […]

Baby Steps = Big Changes Ever since I started teaching and working with writers I’ve advocated the wisdom of baby steps. This means you don’t need to quit your job, dump your lifestyle, or get divorced in order to be a writer. Well, in my case, getting divorced was a big help in becoming a […]

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.  ~William Wordsworth I started teaching writers in 1991 and in these past years I’ve worked with and taught enough writers to fill a small town. Now, if all these writers would move together into this town (I imagine it in the foothills of an impossibly majestic […]

Making It in Tough & Changing Times A Mini Writing Conference January 28th, Portland, Oregon At last, a practical one-day conference crammed with just the information that you need to propel your writing career to the next level and muscle your way to submission. We’ll cover everything from creating potent sentences and writing irresistible query […]

Know Your Character Long after the intricacies of a fictional plot fade from a reader’s memory, the characters linger with an almost physical presence, a twinkle of personality, unforgettable actions, and their happy or sad fates. Character, not plot, is what chiefly interests the reader because he or she translates and feels the character’s actions, […]

First Impressions There is another aspect of character building that’s important to keep in mind; first impressions. A reader wants a rough sketch of major characters when they appear on the page so he can classify them in his imagination. But something else must happen in these first meetings. In your story opening, the opening […]

You cannot write words without learning the alphabet, you cannot write sentences without words, and you cannot write fiction or memoir without scenes. Scenes are the building blocks of fiction and memoir where you stage drama in a continuous unit of action taking place in one location, depicting characters up close. Scenes are built from […]