Leave room in your story for the grey area between right and wrong. This is especially powerful when a character wrestles with a moral dilemma.
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Avoiding the Perils of Expositional Dialogue
There comes a time in many stories when a character must deliver needed information via dialogue. It’s called expositional dialogue—a conversation with a whole lot of facts or explaining going on. It provides the back story and details necessary to understand for the story. Trouble is, after not too long these dialogue exchanges […]
Read the rest of this entry »Inner Logic in Fiction
Does this happen to you? You’re reading along in a novel written by one of your favorite authors and you feel yourself somehow slipping out of the story. Maybe the pace is too slow, or you’re losing interest, or maybe you’re realizing that things aren’t making sense. Or, you’re stopped, puzzled or bothered by an […]
Read the rest of this entry »Quick Take:
Writing is like marriage or a healthy partnership. It needs nurturing, surprises, tender attention. Honesty is required and you cannot take your beloved for granted. And you cannot hold grudges for things that went wrong in the past. Keep writing, keep dreaming, have heart
Read the rest of this entry »Quick Take: Emotions are the lifeblood of stories
Emotions are the lifeblood of characters and stories. Without characters feeling and exhibiting emotions, you’re just writing events, but you’re not drawing readers into your story. As you become more intimately acquainted with your characters, understand their emotional bandwidth, their highest highs and lowest lows. And, of course, how they react to them. Remember too […]
Read the rest of this entry »Quick Note:
If you have not received the latest issue of The Writing Life newsletter, please contact me. My fall schedule will be available on September 3, and registration is now open for the Claim Your Story Conference in Ashland, Oregon on October 4. Fabulous line up of workshops! Keynote speaker is Melissa Hart talking about writing […]
Read the rest of this entry »Practical
I was just talking with a lovely, talented author about a novel she’s working on. She’s having doubts and we were brainstorming how the story could unfold. I started suggesting solutions, rattling them off…..as I tend to do. And she laughed and said, “But this is so practical.” “Well, yes. I am practical. Sometimes solutions […]
Read the rest of this entry »Quick Take: Get into your body
Our minds are crowded little places and we too often sit at our computers our breaths shallow and shoulders riding high. Or, after hours spent alone in your head it feels like an echo chamber. Yet your inner knowing is connected to your heart beat, your breath, your bones. The more you write from your […]
Read the rest of this entry »Writers need to stay curious
“The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one’s curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sun-struck hills every day. Where there is no risk, the emotional terrain is flat and unyielding, and, despite all its dimensions, valleys, pinnacles, and […]
Read the rest of this entry »Quick Tip: Commas
I see this mistake often in manuscripts so just wanted to pass along this reminder about using commas to separate adjectives and after independent clauses. From the Purdue OWL: “Use commas to separate independent clauses when they are joined by any of these seven coordinating conjunctions: and, but, for, or, nor, so, yet. […]
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