One of the biggest problems newer writers have is the word was. I overused it constantly when I first started: Henry was sweating. Margo was crying. The air conditioner was broken. Their daddy was hot. He was crying too. It’s an ugly habit, but also a fairly easy one to break once you become of […]
Is Your Young Adult Fiction too “Young Adult-ie”?
(Note: This is a reprint of a post I wrote for my old blog a few years back. I thought it would be worth sharing, as most of it is still relevant, and it shows some of the stuff that went through my head when I was working on earlier drafts of my novel.) I […]
Five Links Friday 2/10/17
Hey, it’s another awesome Friday! We had a big blast of snow, but it’s almost gone now. I’m planning to take the kids on a big wagon ride around the block later today 🙂 Here are Five Links for you to read over the weekend. 1. Let’s start with one for the self-publishing authors. If […]
When it’s Okay to Use Dream Sequences
Yesterday I list a few reasons why you should avoid using dream sequences in your novel, but just like anything else, there are no absolutes in writing. While you should generally avoid including characters’ dreams in your fiction, there are a few times when it’s okay. It basically comes down to these three thing: Does […]
4 Reasons to avoid dream sequences
In a post last year I listed a few ways to not start your novel. The first thing I listed in that post was dream sequences. I’ll still argue that if you open your story or novel with a dream, you’d better have a darn good reason for it. (Disclaimer: one of my WIP novels […]
Third-person problems
A while back, I did a post on some of the Pitfalls of Writing in the First person. This got me thinking about some of the problems I’ve seen in third-person narratives, both in my own fiction and in other stories I’ve read for Theme of Absence or in the recent Winter Writing Contest hosted […]
Podcast Episode 28 – Writing Pet Peeves
In this episode of The Write Good Books Podcast, Jason and Scott look at a few of the things they see in writing that just get on their nerves, as they take turns discussing their writing pet peeves. Click the link below to stream the episode. Also available at iTunes, Soundcloud, RSS and YouTube. About […]
The Key is to Bring Empathy to Your Characters
I’ve always said that it doesn’t matter how beautiful your prose is, how tight your plot is, or how detailed your setting is, if you can’t get a reader to care about your story. And for me as a reader, the most important thing a writer can do to make me care is to make […]