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Category Archives: Writer’s resource
The dance of suspense
Suspenseful writing is a dance between plausibility (what makes sense to readers), and the unexpected. Not just any unexpected events, such as inheriting a million dollars, but ominous ones, such as discovering that the previous person who inherited that same … Continue reading
Posted in Story structure, Writer's resource
Tagged premonition, Supernatural, suspense
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Searching for the perfect quest
A friend of mine who had a desk cluttered with Star Wars memorabilia, raved about each movie. Yet, she admitted sheepishly that she never finished Lord of the Rings because she just couldn’t get into it. When I read the … Continue reading
Posted in Literature, Trends in books, Writer's resource
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Don’t let your main character get away
One item that agents and editors expect—or demand—is that the author provides enough about the main character to draw in the reader from the very beginning. They don’t want a detailed description of appearance, education or employment. However, the text … Continue reading
Posted in Characters, Literature, Writer's resource
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The illusive pervasive theme
A website for identifying my writing doppelganger named Cory Doctorow when I used a sample from a short story and Kurt Vonnegut when I used one of my articles. As I tested different parts of a novel, the analysis said … Continue reading
Posted in Literature, Writer's resource, Writing trends
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If it’s good enough for me, it’s good enough for a memoir
If you wish to write what you know, or the story of part of your life, you must come to grips with the fact that your life is not a page turner. What is well written memoir for you, may … Continue reading
Should I write what I know?
According to commonly given advice, the popularity of a memoir rests on the fame of a person writing it. However, the argument against “writing what you know” is often refuted by an excellent rebuttal in the form of a well … Continue reading
Making criticism constructive
Using bad writing advice as gatekeeping to keep some people outside of writing circles seemed like a strange accusation to me. It was not something that I considered before, but as I continued to read the article, I recognized behavior … Continue reading
Your darlings may not deserve to die
When Arthur Quiller-Couch lectured on the art of writing at Cambridge in 1914, he uttered a phrase repeated frequently among authors today. Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before … Continue reading
Posted in Writer's resource
Tagged Kill your darlings, murder your darlings, Quiller-Couch, Stephen King
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Showing too much
Carefully polishing my piece for a writing critique, I attempted to picture every detail of a tense scene. Two indigenous boys scavenged through a village ravaged by mudslides, only to encounter unscrupulous men searching for labors to conscript. The boys … Continue reading
Posted in Story structure, Writer's resource
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Did I Miss Something?
Decades ago, in a high school English classroom, one of my better students sat reading Bear Island, a thriller by Alistair MacLean. He asked out loud, “Why can’t we read books like this rather than the stuff we read in … Continue reading
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