From Rick: In this age when it’s easier than ever to sample the writing online (and with so many choices available to readers), it’s more important than ever to ensure you don’t lose a sale simply because your opening lacks
Read moreFrom Rick: I’ve talked many times about the importance of your opening. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a novel or a short story. In today’s world where instant gratification seems to be more the rule of the day, if you
Read moreNOTE: There will be no post next week because I’ll be out of town in Las Vegas doing a couple of booksignings with my “Mosaic” co-author Chris Keaton. If any of you live in the Las Vegas area, stop by
Read moreFrom Rick: On numerous occasions I’ve preached about openings: make sure you have a strong one, and make sure you start the story in the right place. But what if you have a story in mind, one that you’ve written
Read moreFrom Rick: This week I’m going to take a break from my cover design series. It’s a time-consuming series to write and sometimes I need to give each post more careful thought than only a week allows time for. ==========
Read moreFrom Rick: Over at Silver Pen Writers (www.silverpenwriters.org), member Frank Anderson, who is absolutely filled to the brim with good writerly wisdom, posted a great little piece on this topic. It’s a problem I’ve dealt with many times in my
Read moreFrom Rick: Someone recently asked the question: How does one get and hold a reader’s interest? This is a difficult to answer because not only are different readers interested in different things, but a given reader rarely has a single
Read moreFrom Rick: A couple of years back, Scott and I did a five-part series on Openings. If you want to read (or re-read) those, the OPENINGS category on the left side of the blog page will let you find them
Read moreFrom Rick: Among the several sins that many new writers commit, premature flashbacks is often one of them. Two other big sins are launching into backstory too soon after the opening (or in the opening), and the use of a
Read moreFrom Rick: A few blogs back (6/4/2012–“Your Cast of Characters”) I made reference to an article by David Farland and mentioned a point of disagreement I had with some of his points. This time, I’m going to refer to another
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