Your Character’s Wound

May 14, 2023 | Blog, Writing, Writing Craft

I was so surprised last week when I realized that I had never written about a character’s wounds! I learned about this concept from Michael Hauge who speaks about character wounds in his incredible talk on “The Hero’s Two Journeys”.  The...

What you need to get started writing your novel

May 7, 2023 | Blog, Method, Writing Craft

A few weeks ago I talked about my analog toolbox. One of the most important worksheets I use is my “When Starting a Book” Worksheet (it could probably use a better name, but at least that one is descriptive). This worksheet contains the bare minimum you should know...

Peopling Your Story

Apr 30, 2023 | Blog, Writing, Writing Craft

(My apologies: I don’t have the audio version of this post this week. If you’d like one, please contact me and I’ll create one and post it. Thanks for your understanding.) How many people are in your books? To write a novel involves creating...

Go Ahead, Be Mean

Apr 2, 2023 | Blog, Writing, Writing Craft

You have worked very hard to make your main characters likeable… lovable, even. You’ve developed them into complete human beings in your mind and, hopefully, in your novel as well. But then… you’ve got to be mean to them! You’ve got to destroy their wonderful (or even...

On Writing Historical Fiction

Mar 5, 2023 | Blog, Method, Writing, Writing Craft

The hardest part of being a writer of historical fiction is the research. Oh, it’s not always difficult to find resources or to go through them searching for the answers to my questions. No, the hardest part of research is stopping—stopping going through all the...