Straight talk from the sisters about blood, sweat and ink
So you’ve outlined your novel into a Wall of Sticky Notes or a Corkboard of Cards. Congrats, stuff happens! But stories are not just stuff happening. Stories are a series of scenes. Is each note/card a proper scene? Not sure? Take this test: Is That A Scene? Next Up from Heather… Robin pointed out that …
Continue reading “Outlining – Method 3 cont: From Sticky Notes to Proper Scenes”
Some say there is only one story ever written. It’s rearranged, maybe some parts are omitted, some may dominate, but in the end it’s always the same. You can throw in a few best friends, a love interest, a unique setting, but it’s still the same story. According to American scholar Joseph Campbell, this pattern …
Continue reading “OH! SAVE ME! SAVE ME! The Hero Model”
I’ve always felt the call of the wild, that deep magnetic draw to be outside. The feeling stuck with me even after bad times, days when Mother Nature let me know she held all the cards. Like when I lost my footing while backpacking and tumbled down an embankment, or when a Tarantula Hawk sting …
Continue reading “The Call of the Wild and How Writers Respond.”
If you’re a visual person, Outlining Method #3 is for you! I call it The Wall of Sticky Notes, because that’s how I build it. Others create a Corkboard of Cards. In the business of screenwriting, it’s simply called “The Board.” As you can see, it has four lines: Act I, Act II part one, …
Continue reading “Outlining – Method 3: The Wall of Sticky Notes (aka “The Board”)”
Halloween is the perfect time to write about the antagonist: the bad guy, the killer, the malevolent force who’ll make your protagonist’s life pure hell. The trick here is to write an antagonist who is strong enough to make you root for the protagonist. When I wrote my first novel, I knew that Lucifer would …
Continue reading “BOO! Did I Scare You? Writing the antagonist”
Some writers’ stories just come to mind, fully formed. Lucky them. It’s more likely that snippets of a story streak through your brain, like a naked drunk criss-crossing the football field, and when you chase it down to determine whether this tale is hot or not, it evaporates into thin air. Or maybe there’s a …
Continue reading “3 Simple Tips for Finding Your Story”
2013 has turned out to be a really bad year for me, physically that is. First, I broke my left ankle and then a few months later broke the right. Perhaps a little investigation into bone density is in order? The first one wasn’t so bad because after six weeks of no-weight bearing I could …
Continue reading “The Stink of Blue Jasmine: Writing the Protagonist”
For urban dwellers, nature sits apart. Most of us only see the spare, diminished nature of city parks and backyard gardens. Even these natural settings we relegate to the rear of our consciousness as we focus on the conditions around us, the cars in the street, our work cubical, a much-needed trip to the grocery …
Continue reading “Into the Wild: Creating Nature Settings”
Robin, Heather and I had been crit partners for months and I found their comments incredibly insightful and helpful. Meanwhile, an editor friend of mine took a crack at a few of my chapters and leveled the comment: “too many passive verbs, kill as many forms of the verb to be as you can.” I’d …
Continue reading “To Be or Not to Be: Avoiding Passive Verbs”
I happen to love architecture, I always have. I’m one of those strange people who measures time by my landmark acquisitions. However, I believe anyone can learn to write about structures (from castles, to space stations, to huts) by asking themselves a few simple questions about how they want to use the building in the …
Continue reading “Navigating Architectural Spaces in your Fiction: From Apse to Ziggurat:”