Tips 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 moreNovel writing
Overwritten 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
Read moreSome thoughts on getting unstuck in your writing
From Rick: We’ve all heard the term “writer’s block” to mean being unable to write. It usually ranges from not being able to come up with any ideas at all to not being able to move forward on a particular
Read moreDealing with story details and description—Part 1
From Rick: From time to time the question arises from writers about how much detail and description to add to a story and how and when to insert it. This important topic is going to take at least two posts
Read moreSome thoughts on outlining
From Rick: When it comes to writing, there are two basic approaches one can take: outlining, and writing by the seat of your pants, often called “pantsing.” I’ve written both ways, and I have known other writers who have done
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