One of the best habits you can cultivate as a writer is the power of observation. People all around you give you amazing content. Whether it’s the obnoxious barista that won’t even look at you or the friendly cashier at the local market. Everyone you encounter provide a wonderful panoply of characterizations. The only thing […]
Creating a Narcissistic Personality When Creating Villains
Many of the villains in the books I read are narcissistic personalities #writingvillains #amwriting Click To Tweet These are people who display a lot of cunning and very little empathy. They may appear as sociopaths, but their tendency to want recognition for their bad behavior suggests a tendency toward a narcissistic personality type. The Norwegian […]
Five Tips for Character Development
As writers we are fascinated with people. Why? Our characters reflect real people. As such, they must act in realistic ways. We can’t have them do things that are “out of character.” We can dig deep inside ourselves and our experiences to create the people who fill our books or we can use other methods. […]
What Works and What Doesn’t Work in Writing Fiction
As I’ve studied the art of fiction writing, I’ve learned that it is much more an art than a science. What works one day is proved false the next. What readers eat up today, they toss aside tomorrow. Clearly the art of writing fiction takes patience and a willingness to push the envelope. I’m reading […]
How do you know when you’re done?
Artists tell me it’s hard to know when a painting is finished. One told me that if she works on a painting for too long, she ruins it. This reminds me of my writing. I tweak and tweak and then tweak some more. Was it better before the last tweak or after the first tweak? […]
Tips for Underwriting your Overwriting
As a writer who creates something from nothing, I often catch myself overwriting. If you are a big name writer, editors leave your overwriting in your books and readers learn to skim and sigh. If you’re not so famous, you must catch your own overwriting and learn to under write. By under write, I mean […]
Tips to Write with Emotion without Overusing Exclamation Points
We all know it’s important to use good punctuation in writing our #fiction #amwriting Click To Tweet When we overuse commas, it distracts the reader. Conversely, when we leave out a comma, the reader may not understand what we are trying to say. Punctuation has an important place in the writing. But, is it the-be-all-end […]
Writers Helping Writers
As I struggle along with my new manuscript, I realize how much writers have to do alone. We create, edit and ponder all by our little lonesomes. Here is where I’d love to have a writing partner. Wouldn’t it be nice to toss ideas off someone, to ask them to read what you’ve written, to […]
What to do When You’ve Run Out of Things to Say
Here I am facing another Wednesday and time to publish a new post. I’ve written about writing fiction and nonfiction. I’ve looked at the way authors develop their characters and come up with character names. I’ve examined the pros and cons for pantser styles and outliner styles. I’ve looked at grammar issues and non issues. […]
5 Tips for Eliminating Redundancy in Writing
How many times do readers need to be told something? #amwriting Click To Tweet Not long ago I read a novel in which one of the male characters had long eyelashes. In the author’s first description of the character, we heard about the long eyelashes. Later, we heard about them again in dialogue. In fact, […]
