Straight talk from the sisters about blood, sweat and ink
When I read a book or watch a movie, I always try to figure out what is going to happen. For me, the most enjoyable stories keep me guessing right up to the end. The least enjoyable stories are the ones where I can predict the ending long before the finale. Now, you’re probably expecting …
Continue reading “How To Write Unpredictable Stories”
If we were having coffee, I might not be in the best mood. I would still welcome you into my home. And serve up your chosen beverage. Hot or iced? You’d know from the bags under my eyes and the fact that I’m not serving fresh baked anything, that something is very wrong. The news …
Continue reading “Coffee Share and Cat Care”
[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 …
Continue reading “Solutions for Common Writing Mistakes: Runaway Word Counts”
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 …
Continue reading “The Key to Writing 3-Dimensional Characters”
If we were having coffee, we’d be watching the Pan Am Games in my hometown of Toronto. I really want to go see Trampoline, but those tickets have been sold out for a long time. Perhaps we can scalp some? If not, we’ll watch it live on the iPad via the CBC app. In between …
Continue reading “Weekend Coffee Share at the PanAm Games”
Today, trunking is getting a whole new round of attention. That’s because one of the most famous trunked novels of all time just hit the bookstalls. Unless you live under a WiFi-free rock, you know Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman arrived in stores yesterday. It comes to us with much-anticipated fanfare after living a …
Continue reading “Trunked! Lessons from Harper Lee about Stashing a Manuscript”
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 …
Continue reading “5 Tests for Writing Multiple POVs”
If we were having coffee, we’d tell you winning a blog award – the Liebster Award – made our week. It’s a fun award and came to us from a blogger we adore. Big shout-out to Sara Letourneau for nominating us. If you don’t read her author blog, or one of the many blogs she …
Continue reading “Weekend Coffee Share – Blogger Award Q&A”
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 …
Continue reading “10 Tips for Writing Fight Scenes”
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 …
Continue reading “Screenplays vs Game Scripts: 5 Differences”