There is often a temptation to give your reader more than they really need, or, more importantly, want to know. For example, you describe a garden that is just coming into bloom and then go into minute detail about the flowers and trees. Your description includes the botanical names of three species from one genus,… Read more »
Somehow bad guys and gals are in many ways more challenging to create than our so-called heroes or heroines. This is an area of your writing that invites you to stretch yourself, to play with multiple violations, remembering that you will fall in love with this character, and you will have to manage, at the… 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 »
When it comes to working with literary themes in your writing, it’s not enough to identify or study them. It’s also crucial to practice incorporating themes logically and thoughtfully into your work. We did this last year with a series of writing and brainstorming exercises for the theme of family. Today, we’ll do this again… Read more »
Our author voices are made up of a combination of modes. The four main ones being dialogue, description, action, and internal thought. Those are the most common modes balancing fictional prose. Too much of any one mode—clumps of description, trains of dialogue, pages of action, and dumps of internal thought—bogs down prose and makes it… Read more »
Hey there word nerds! Today I am delighted to have David Plante on the show! David grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, within a French-Canadian parrish, much the same way as Jack Kerouac did in Lowell, Massachusetts, in an area which was known in the 17h century as La Nouvelle France. David has written several… Read more »
Hey there word nerds! Today I am delighted to have author Howard Kaplan on the show! Howard is a native of Los Angeles, but he has lived in Israel and traveled to numerous places across the world, including Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt. He also has had some incredible adventures in the former Soviet Union which,… Read more »
Web Editor’s Note: Please join me in welcoming Abigail K. Perry to the DIY MFA team! In her column, Let’s Talk Books, she’ll be dissecting passages from great writers, breaking down why what they do works, and how you can apply it to your own writing. Have you ever walked into a park and people watched? How… Read more »
Hey there word nerds! Today I am thrilled and delighted to be speaking with author Amor Towles about his latest book A Gentleman in Moscow. If you’ve ever struggled with world-building, this book is a master class on how to navigate the multiple layers of setting and that’s what we talk about this interview today…. Read more »
Hey there, Word Nerds! So excited to have you here for a new episode of DIY MFA Radio. Today I’m interviewing the New York Times bestselling thriller author, Brad Taylor. We’ll be talking about the fiction vs. reality. As writers, we’ve all been told to “write what you know” but as with everything, there are… Read more »
