Straight talk from the sisters about blood, sweat and ink
Nothing elevates the quintessential protagonist like the perfect sidekick. These secondary characters help showcase the protagonist’s positive and negative traits by contrasting them against the sidekick’s own traits. The bond between these two characters is often a vulnerable relationship. Our good friends always know our darkest history, the secrets we never share with outsiders. At …
Continue reading “Casting Call: 7 Sidekick Archetypes”
Writing dialogue is the heart of my writing. A scene always takes shape in my mind with two or more people having a conversation. I put the dialogue to paper and then add the physical setting, background details, emotions, inner monologue and body language. It’s the only way I know how to write. As I’ve …
Continue reading “He Said, She Said: Writing Dialogue”
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) takes place every November. As most of you know, the goal is to compose a first draft of your novel, roughly 50,000 words during the 30 days. It works out to be a doable 1,667 words a day, but only if you sit down and write that chunk every day. …
Continue reading “Lessons From The NaNoWriMo Trenches”
As I mentioned in my last post, Pace, Friend or Foe, one great way to drive a novel’s pace and keep people reading, is to end your chapters with a cliffhanger. Most people are familiar with the cliffhanger at the end of a novel (encouraging you to buy the next book in the series) or …
Continue reading “8 Ways to End a Chapter With a Cliffhanger”
Last week I said I’d write about NaNoWriMo, that whirlwind of writing activity centered around churning out a novel in 30 days. A year ago I actually pulled it off without registering, as I wanted to see if such a thing could be done, if I could do such a thing. At the end of …
Continue reading “Secret benefits of NaNoWriMo”
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”
If you’re like me, you spend the whole day talking. Sometimes, when the Fates smile, I’m talking with my keyboard, and what I have to say requires access to a time traveler, for I am a historical writer. All fiction has a unique set of challenges, but I find the creation of believable period language …
Continue reading “What Doth it Profit Thee? Building Historical Vocabulary”
When I left TV to write a novel, I really believed I’d be done in a year. Why not? I already knew how to put together a story. Yet as an episodic freelance screenwriter, I’d only been working with the “meat” of a story, not the whole hamburger. That’s right, I’m going all food analogy …
Continue reading “A Novel is a Hamburger (aka The Difference Between TV Scripts and Novels)”