by Kathleen Y’Barbo I’ve had a love affair with long, aimless drives well before I found love with a man who shared that passion. Sliding behind the wheel, plugging in the iPod or adjusting Pandora radio, and then pointing the car toward an unknown destination has long been my idea of a grand day. If the weather’s nice, the top …
To Err is Human
by Marcia Gruver While teaching a creative writing class, I passed a little card around the room and instructed the students to read aloud the following sentence: Now is the time for all good men to come to the the aid of their country. One by one, the eager scholars misread it. Until I pointed out each word on a …
Off To A Strong Start
by Maureen Lang Sometimes the place your story starts isn’t always the place to open your novel. There are three choices: •Just Before the major problem/conflict comes up, with a hint of the iceberg ahead. •Just As the conflict arises. •Just After the hero or heroine has a first glimpse of that looming iceberg in their path. Just-before openings allow …
Practice Makes Perfect
by Fay Lamb My son was once an accomplished violinist, but when he first started to play, his tutor, a first string with the local symphony orchestra, struggled with keeping him on task. One day my son Corey walked into practice. “Igor, I don’t want to play violin. I want to learn to fiddle.” Igor stood back in his old …
ACFW Book Club
Have you heard about our ACFW Bookclub? Each month the club chooses two ACFW members’ books that have been submitted by the authors. I run the giveaway where the chosen authors (from our monthly poll) donate 4 copies of their books to Bookclub members. Then, we have announcements on upcoming discussions with blurbs about each chosen book. We do our …
Ten Tips For Better Characterization
by Maureen Lang 1) Realistic, natural dialogue. Like a musician with an ear for notes, be a writer with an ear for conversational rhythm. Read your dialogue aloud to be sure it sounds like what you hear around you-only better! Real life might afford extraneous “ums,” repetitions, and unclear meaning but the written word allows only clarity and tight communication. …
Conflicted Hearts
by Laurie Alice Eakes Recently, a writer asked why conflict so often seemed to be understood as sniping and snarky comments between the hero and heroine. She knew that conflict had to arise from something more than attitudes verging on hostility, but how? I promised her a blog post on the subject. Mind you, this is targeted at romance-oriented stories, …
Writing in the Now
by Jill Elizabeth Nelson When teaching the techniques of Deep Point of View that will virtually squash issues with show/don’t tell, I emphasize the importance of writing lively, linear prose. In other words, every sentence must remain in the Now-not darting ahead or lagging behind in the sequence of events. This does not mean our characters can’t consider past or …
Counting Reasons to Attend Writers’ Conferences
By Becky Jacoby Five years ago, if anyone would have asked me about attending a writers’ conference, I would have advised against it. Even though I dreamed bigger dreams and was working steadily, I thought, “Why spend money to learn things already available in a plethora of online resources or books? Just do some homework, keep working on writing skills …
When the Words Won’t Come
by Mary Ellis Every writer whether our contemporaries or long gone has wrestled for hours when they can’t string seven words together into a concise sentence. We doubt ourselves, our mentors, the process we thought we’d perfected, even the quality of beans that went into our cup of java. It happens to the best of us. And it will happen …