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
Read moreFrom 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
Read moreFrom 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 moreFrom 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 moreFrom 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 moreFrom 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 moreFrom 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 moreFrom 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 moreFrom 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 moreFrom 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 moreFrom 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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