In a post last week, I talked about how I’m going to take a little break from novels and try to boost my writing morale by finishing a couple of short stories. I decided to work on a paranormal horror story that has been sitting in my WIP folder for…wow, for like six years. Here’s […]
Five Links Friday the 13th 1/13/17
As is my tradition here at the site, I like to do a special horror-related line-up on of Five Links if the day falls on a Friday the 13th. So here we are. Enjoy! 1. Originally for Halloween, but suitable here as well, here are 31 Horrifying Writing Prompts to Help You Scare the Bejesus […]
Write What You Know. (But what do you know?)
If there’s one saying that is repeated to new writers even more than Show, Don’t Tell, it’s got to be “Write what you know.” I had a college poetry professor that like the phrase so much he made us recite it every day as class begun. What’s kind of funny is that after all these […]
Where’s the conflict?
Three Types of conflict, plus(?) We can all remember learning about conflict in literature when we were in high school. The classic three types of conflict are: Man vs. Man. Man vs. Nature. Man vs. Self. You can also add Man vs. Society, but I would argue that that isn’t really any different than Man […]
When it’s okay to tell
While the long-standing mantra in fiction writing is show, don’t tell, are there ever times when telling is just as good as (or even better than) showing? I would argue that, yes, there are. And yesterday, in my post about showing, not telling, I even mentioned that there are a few times when telling is […]
3 Tricks to Help Show, Not Tell
Yesterday in a post about developing characters, I brought up the old adage Show, Don’t Tell. It got me thinking about it and as far as I can tell, I don’t think I’ve done a post on that topic. Since there are already posts about showing not telling on a million other sites, I thought […]
Develop your characters by getting to know them
Shallow characters with little development can be one of the most common causes of rejections. The person on the other side of the page (whether agent, editor, or reader) wants to see that the characters are real people, with real lives, living though (and preferably influencing) the events of the story. So how do you […]
5 Things to NOT Do in Your Writing
So as 2016 winds down, and I (and hopefully you as well) start planning out all of the things I want to do next year. While I don’t always hide my real feelings about Christmas (hint: They aren’t good) New Year’s Eve is perhaps my favorite day of the year. It may even edge out […]
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