The Importance of your character’s wound

Mar 31, 2024 | Writing, Writing Craft

I’m certain you learned in English class that all characters must have a flaw. This is what stops them from attaining their goal. It’s what gets in the way of their relationships. But where does that flaw come from? It comes from the character’s...

Say What? Part 2

Mar 24, 2024 | Blog, Writing, Writing Craft

This is a continuation of the article I wrote last week. You can read it here. In this post I’ll talk about: to show conflict, (show vs. tell) to impart information to the reader succinctly, to make the reader a part of the action. Determine the pacing of the...

Say What? Writing Dialogue

Mar 17, 2024 | Blog, Writing, Writing Craft

Dialogue is an essential tool of the novelist, but too many either don’t know how to write it or may not understand all that well written dialogue can do for their story. This is going to be a two-part blog post because there is just that much to say about the topic....

Don’t let this get in your reader’s way

Mar 10, 2024 | Blog, Writing, Writing Craft

When my great-grandfather emigrated from Ukraine to the United States in the mid-19th century, he did so on a set of papers with someone else’s name on them—a name my family still has today. Those same papers went right back to his little village in Ukraine and the...

Reviving an old book

Feb 11, 2024 | Blog, Business of Writing, Writing, Writing Craft

If you’ve been publishing for a while, it’s possible that you’ve got some old, backlist books that could use an update. But how do you go about doing it and what should you consider when you face this task? I’ve recently been re-reading one of the first books I...

Why not omniscient voice?

Feb 4, 2024 | Blog, Writing, Writing Craft

I’ve been working with an author who has written a “self-help novel”. Basically, he wants readers to come away having learned a lesson after reading his fictional book. Fiction with a moral? Whatever you want to call it, he’s a new author (this is his first book) and...