Category: *Writing Craft

Solutions for Common Writing Mistakes: Runaway Word Counts

[pullquote align=”right” textalign=”left” width=”20%” ]“A lot of first-time children’s novels are too long.” Charlie Sheppard, editor of Bone Jack by Sara Crowe[/pullquote] Recently I read a post in the Guardian. They interviewed some of the top editors in children’s fiction to discover the most common mistakes made by new writers. {I’ve included a few of the …
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The Key to Writing 3-Dimensional Characters

The most common advice I’ve heard for writing three-dimensional characters is to delve into their backstory, develop their personality profiles, and get to know them as if they are alive and kicking right beside you. Common wisdom seems to support that if the author knows their characters inside and out, then said characters will be …
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5 Tests for Writing Multiple POVs

Multiple POV means writing separate scenes from the viewpoints of different characters, staying in one character’s POV for an entire scene and not switching to another character’s POV until a new scene. Stories with multiple POVs are difficult to write. I’ve read more books that attempted this technique and failed than books where multiple POVs not …
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10 Tips for Writing Fight Scenes

Have you ever skipped a badly written fight scene to get back to the main story? I have, and I never missed it. That’s because although fight scenes are often critical to the plot, once the blows start flying, two things often happen. Writer #1 includes too little detail and there’s no tension. We don’t …
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Screenplays vs Game Scripts: 5 Differences

Recently I was hired to write a video game script. I’ve never written for games, but both the producer and I thought my screenwriting skills would translate well since each medium uses dialogue as a key storytelling device. However, except for dialogue skills, I found out that game writing is pretty much the opposite of …
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Test Those Scene Connections – But, Therefore & Then

As I build my outline, I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes a good scene, and that led to these posts: Test That Scene – Is It Essential or Filler? and Test That Scene – Cut or Revise? But what about stringing those scenes together? Is there a test for that? Serendipitously I came …
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Test That Scene – Cut or Revise?

A month ago I wrote a post called Test That Scene – Is It Essential or Filler? The basics of it are this: No Filler Test Question #1 – If deleted, will the reader still be able to follow the story? If yes, you’ve got filler! Question #2 – What is different by the end …
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Writing Tips for 1st Person POV

First person POV has its advantages and its drawbacks. If you love it, and many writers do, you know one of the biggest issues is the overuse of personal pronouns. If you’re not paying attention, you can end up with long passages where every other sentence starts with the same word. In those rare instances …
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Reading for Writers 101 Roundup

A work crisis, a funeral and a deadline have made this week rather chaotic for me, so it is time for a roundup post! I created the Reading for Writers 101 series because I believe reading critically is an essential component of learning writing craft. Plus the series gives me an outlet to not only …
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The Back-up Antagonist

We recently had a guest join us to talk about creating characters with good character. If you haven’t read that post, I strongly suggest you do, since creating likable characters is always a hot topic with writers. However, it turns out I’m a contrarian. I’m crazy about unlikable characters that run from those skirting the …
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