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- What Exactly is Imagery?
- The Writing Sampler
- Classics Don’t Qualify as Comps
- Dealing with Painful Critiques
- The Power of Laughter
- Scoring Your Sense of Humor
- Why Do We Read Emotions?
- Distinguishing types of laughter
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- The Price of Staying Connected
- The Physiology of Love and Fear
- What Catches My Attention in a Book?
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Author Archives: knlistman
The Physiology of Love and Fear
The demand for writing from the character’s point of viewpoint is increasing. Sights, sounds, textures and tastes should reflect the perception of the character. But, what about physiological reactions? These descriptions capture the racing heart and euphoria, or the rise … Continue reading
What Catches My Attention in a Book?
We are supposed to judge books by their covers or by the blurbs and by the author’s name. I have favorite books by authors who names I have forgotten. I willing to look at I work with and out of … Continue reading
Are You What You Read?
We don’t seem to be recovering from the drop in literacy within the United States among school age children in 2019 and following years. The standard response is blame the problem on children not receiving an adequate education during the … Continue reading
Posted in Characters, Emotional intelligence, Literature, Trends in books
Tagged Education, Language arts, Literacy, teachers, teaching
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Pushover Protagonist?
How often have you heard warnings against creating a protagonist who is the opposite of a mover and shaker, one who simply lets things happen to them? Or one who watches the other characters struggle without taking charge? A main … Continue reading
Writing and the Stock Market
All ideas have been done before. It’s basically impossible not to reuse one. If it hasn’t been done before, the idea will make almost no sense to anyone. That defeats the purpose of using it. Conformists want ideas that are … Continue reading
What are Looks in a Story?
If I describe one of my protagonists as chubby with a large pyramid-shaped nose, fat eyelids and thin hair, I believe I’ve indicated she is not attractive. So, she is not deluding herself when she says she is ugly. However, … Continue reading
Posted in Characters, Story structure
Tagged appearance, beauty, book-review, books, complex-characters, Fiction, looks, Writing, writing-tips
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Allowing Ourselves to Grow
Imagine entering a store to buy some clothes for the upcoming year. In the athletic section there’s one style of outfit and it comes in four basic colors that all go together. The same is true for casuals clothes, business … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Audience, book-review, book-reviews, books, Change, Fiction, Growth, Publishing, Reading Level, Tropes, Writing
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Names and Xenophobia
Imagine a reviewer whose major complaint with a fantasy book manuscript was the number of times that words weren’t recognized by MS Word spell check. This person even provided me with the total–all names of people and places within the … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Characters, Fantasy, grammar, historical, language, names, novel, pronunciation, spell-checker, Writing
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A Stuck Character
The character that I’ve imagined is stuck. Literally. He’s in solitary confinement, or in a dungeon, or abandoned on an island, and I know how he’s going to escape. But, for now he’s stuck. Should I just jump ahead to … Continue reading
My Boring Little Life
What dark secrets can I dredge up to reveal that occured during hours of deliberating about the plot? If I promised to tell the audience the deepest secrets of my life and lived up to my promise, they would be … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged book-review, book-reviews, books, Creating characters, Creativity, Fiction, Plot ideas, Writers Resources, Writing, Writing from real life
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Write about what? 