by Laura McClellan Any novelist who studies craft reads a lot about the rules: Show, don’t tell. Avoid adverbs. No head-hopping. These rules have developed to help us create fiction that welcomes the reader in, with no barriers to the reader’s participation in the story. I recently reread Francine Rivers’s Redeeming Love, one of my favorite novels ever. The characters …
Permission to Noodle
by Anne Mateer Confession time. For all my aversion to math, I thrive on measurable productivity. A number of words written. A number of pages revised. The number of books read in a week, month or year. The amount of time spent research-or even cleaning house or running errands. It all signals productivity. A worthwhile expenditure of time. And yet, …
Genetics-Based Grammarianism
By Michelle Arch In a world of tweeting, texting, chattering, status updates, desktop messaging, flash fiction, and the ubiquitous shrunken novel, rhetoric and the art of epic articulation, sadly, are no longer appreciated and extolled. Murky millennial jargon and cryptic acronyms have replaced the precision of entire phrases and sentences, leaving some of us to wonder if the writer is …
Playing it Safe
Playing it Safe By Katherine Reay Working on my third manuscript seems to be an exercise in conquering fear. Someone told me that my second would be the most difficult, but now that it’s behind me – and it will be to you in October – this third one has me in knots. Now it maybe because the process is …
Define Success
By Jennifer Sienes I am not a published author. Let me repeat that-I am not a published author. Okay, technically, I suppose that’s not true. I’ve had some short stories and an article published. But since the majority of my time is spent on novel writing, that’s truly where my heart is. And it’s taken me quite some time (six …
Three Steps to Creating an Occupation for Your Characters
by Cara C. Putman As writers, one of our tasks is finding the right career for your characters. Not only do your characters populate your story, they fill roles and hold jobs. Finding the right career can be a key piece to getting the character to fit. Sometimes when I pick up a novel, it feels like the character’s job …
Fit & Fabulous Writing
By Kathy Harris Did you charge out of the starting blocks with the first three chapters of a great new story idea… but now you’re having trouble crossing the finish line? Does your first draft sag in the middle? Maybe your plot needs a bit of firming up. You might benefit from a new writing routine. Fitness coaches tell us …