Microsoft Word has officially drawn a line in the sand—a squiggly red one, that is. And depending on your typing training (and how recently you’ve updated your software), you may have started seeing a lot more of those squiggly lines pop up recently. That’s because Microsoft Word is now flagging two spaces after a sentence… Read more »
Description is one of those magical elements of prose. Whether it’s “good” or not is entirely subjective. One author’s Mozart is another’s Metallica. But, regardless of your preferences, there are some techniques and literary tools you can use to tighten your sentences and sharpen your description. Here are just five tricks you can use. 1)… Read more »
Unfortunately, no one has invented a way to write a novel without actually sitting down to write it. So it remains true that the only way to finish whatever project you’re working on is to keep filling that page with words. Trust me, I know it’s not as easy as it sounds. There’s nothing more… Read more »
This is not the article I intended to write. But I found, just as likely you, too, that I couldn’t focus on anything other than the viral elephant in our global living room. This coronavirus, COVID-19, won’t let any of us ignore it. Constant news alerts about death, the reality of livelihood loss, and the… Read more »
Do series characters change? A better question might be: Should series characters change? Go through some upheaval that arcs their life into uncharted waters? But, first, what is a character arc? Where does it come from? How do you create this in your fictional stories? More importantly, do you even need one? What is a… Read more »
Greetings, my lovely Speculators! I hope you’re keeping safe and well in these remarkable times. I also hope you’ve enjoyed this miniseries on the tarot for writers so far. To recap, in Part 1, I offered a brief introduction to the tarot, in Part 2, I reviewed five books on the tarot for writers, and… Read more »
When we’re elbows-deep in outlining, drafting, redrafting and revising our manuscripts, it can be hard to imagine that our works in progress will ever be truly finished. Yet, we will inevitably get to the end—or what feels like it could be the end—of our novel-writing process. And when that happens, the question of what to… Read more »
Writing about something difficult is, well, difficult—at first. You can’t process something emotionally charged all at once any more than you can write anything from start to finish in one fell swoop. I recommend you JustWrite before you start drafting. Think of this writing as a kind of warm-up that will help you discover what… Read more »
In the last installment of “Ten Lessons in Ten Years” I talked about the importance of building the right things. Creativity doesn’t happen in a vacuum. We write books because we have stories to share, stories that need to be read. This means when we do our creative work, we must think about the people… Read more »
Don’t you love how it feels when it’s time to create the first chapter of a new romance novel? The mandatory, behind the pages grunt work is complete and your fingertips hover, ready to tap-tap-tap across the keyboard. You are stoked and imagine the keys ablaze with flames of creativity. WOO HOO, life is good…. Read more »
