Category: Writing

I am an outliner. I need a plan, I need to know I can hit my beats, I need to know where my characters are going. Therefore, I plan in advance. Yet, the further I get in this journey, the more I realize what a useless label that really...

I’ve spent a great deal of time wondering about the difference between “a story” and, “a sequence of events that happen to a character.” Those might appear to be synonyms, but they are not. A story — a good one, anyway — is more than just a slice of...

Pro-Writing Aid, an online program that analyzes your writing and gives you recommendations to improve it.As I was looking at a report on a piece it gave the number of adverbs and recommended that I remove three. I must have missed this before but I do tend to use...

Time for a(nother) quick writer’s block rant. There is a fair amount of wisdom in Finding Nemo, believe it or not. As a new father confronting the world of hyper-protective parenting and we-don’t-keep-score-at-games-so-nobody-ever-has-to-lose mentality, etc, I’ve given a little thought to Dory: Marlin: I promised I’d never let anything...

When I'm doing one I'm not doing the other. ...

You’ve sweated, plotted and struck the nubs of your fingers into your keyboard enough times to wear indentations into the keys. The first draft is in your hands. What do you do now? You fix it. Even best selling authors have to repair their story structure. Kevin Hearn gives...

You’ve plotted or pants your way through your novel, spent long months of taking your hero or heroine from there to back again, and then you read it. And die a little inside. Because even though you’ve created engaging characters, put them in gut twisting situations, and gave them...

It seems that my blog rolls in a cycle I talk about goals, targets, what my plans are and how I’m going to achieve them. The next week I’m back making excuses, explaining why nothing came to fruition, accepting failure and doing better the next time. (I swear this...

Goals for the New Year...

Oh no. No one actually interviewed me. But over at Fantasy-Writers.org a member posted a thread asking us about how we started as writers and then added a few more questions. It evolved into an interview of sorts so here goes: 1.How did everyone get their start in writing...