Category: Writing Tips

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Writing Tips

Take a Break From Your Writing

I’m all for being focused on your writing, being disciplined, having a plan. And of course having goals. But sometimes you need to take a break. I don’t know about you, but I find...

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Writing Tips

Perspective: Pointing the Way to Story by Kay Keppler

Part of craft is choosing from which perspective, or point of view, you tell your story. Your choices are first, second, or third person (limited or omniscient). Each has its strengths and drawbacks. Well, okay, second person has no strengths, only drawbacks, unless you’re writing how-to manuals. In that case, carry on. Fiction people, you have choices to make.

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Writing Tips

SHOW vs TELL – What the he … heck? by Author Carol Malone

When editors and critiquers first started reading through my precious manuscripts, I got a lot of “Show, don’t tell,” scrawled across my pages in blood-red ink. And of course, I thought, What the h@#l. What does “Show don’t tell” mean? No one explained it precisely, they all expected me to glean the meaning from the insufficient information they didn’t bother to offer me.

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Writing Tips

Writer Envy by Annmarie Miles

I cheer and whoop and holler for other writers’ success; and when I do, I mean it. I genuinely mean it. But I find myself constantly comparing myself to others and how they are doing. Social media doesn’t help with that. Knowing how many followers and likes and comments etc that others have can give me a false sense of triumph and needless disappointment.

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Writing Tips

Story Beginnings by Kay Keppler

Hooking that reader with an intriguing opening is critical, especially if that reader is unfamiliar with your work. Many books have well-established ways of opening. Authors, like chess masters, can choose familiar opening gambits that help readers feel comfortable while establishing the story, stirring interest, and starting the action. You might want to think about launching your story with one of these familiar types of openings.

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Writing Tips

Six Games to Play With Reality and Your Readers by Wyatt Bessing

I dedicate this month’s column to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who passed away this month at the age of 87. The master and popularizer of a narrative mode called magical realism, Marquez artfully blends the fantastic and the real into a tapestry from which both fantasy and reality are inextricable.

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