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...

Cheat: Get to know your characters faster

Feb 18, 2024 | Blog, Method, Writing

If you’re a pantser, you probably start out writing your story with a vague idea of some characters—the protagonist, a secondary character or two, and maybe the antagonist. You know, sort of what happens in the story, or maybe you don’t. Maybe you just know that there...

Complete the Character

Jul 2, 2023 | Blog, Writing, Writing Craft

Endings are on my mind today. I just spent the last three days with my father (90 years old) who is dying—his body is simply shutting down. Now, we don’t usually write about death in our novels, unless it is a sudden one that must be investigated, but we do write...

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...

Exploring the Third Rail

Oct 2, 2022 | Blog, Method, Writing, Writing Craft

I was preparing for a talk I’m going to be giving this weekend to the Maryland Romance Writers when I was reminded of Lisa Cron’s concept of the Third Rail. This is an easy way to think about Story, Plot, Character development, and GMC all wrapped up into one very...