Writing tips from the pros
From Rick: Back in May of 2019, I did a post called “Tips from the experts” wherein I pulled out what I considered the best advice and provided a link to the full article I quoted from. Here’s the link
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Story flaws: Finding and fixing them—PART 2
From Rick: In PART-1, I talked about three major flaws a story can have: (1) The story fails to engage the reader (2) The characters fail to engage the reader (3) The story takes too long to become interesting (or
Read moreUsing scene breaks properly
From Rick: From time to time I receive questions about scenes and scene breaks. We’ve all heard the term “scene” used, but we don’t often hear it defined. Here’s one concise definition I found online: “A scene is a section
Read moreTips for writing a scene
From Rick: You’ll find many articles on the internet and whole books devoted to advice on how to write a scene. I’m not going to pretend to know everything nor claim that I know better. What I want to do
Read moreOverwritten manuscripts: how to fix—PART 3
From Rick: In Part 2, I talked about two ways in which writers may overwrite: —unnecessary use of characters’ names —repeated words and phrases In this last part I’ll finish up this series by talking about three other ways writers
Read moreOverwritten manuscripts: how to fix—PART 2
From Rick: Last time, I pointed out several ways in which writers overwrite their stories and novels: —unnecessary dialogue tags —wordiness in general —unnecessary repetition of information To that list I want to add: —unnecessary use of characters’ names —repeated
Read moreOverwritten: a surfeit of words—PART 1
From Rick: Mark Twain’s essay “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses” is famous both for its typical Twain humor and for Twain’s rules for good writing. I’ve mentioned this essay before. You can do a Google search for it, or you can
Read moreIndie publishing: Are you doing it wrong?—Part One
From Rick: In late 2007, with the advent of Kindle Direct Publishing, the self-publishing landscape forever changed. Many authors embraced this new publishing world and grew with it as it has changed over the years since. Some have been slow
Read moreHow do you start writing a novel?
From Rick: One of the questions I hear from time to time, and which I heard recently, goes something like this: “I have this idea for a novel. I know what I want to say, but I don’t know how
Read moreDealing with story details and description—Part 2
From Rick: Do you interrupt your story with description? Scott and I have dealt with the topic of description several times in 2015 and more recently in Part of this two-part series back in September 2018. Click on DESCRIPTION in
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