Most authors and their readers will agree that nothing beats a good bout of dialogue. Witty, poignant, romantic, angry—it’s all good. We all love it when characters open their big mouths and let fly. But creating good dialogue isn’t as easy as saying the first thing that pops to mind. Good dialogue is all about […]
January 11, 2012 by 19 Comments CharactersTwo Surefire Symptoms of Static Characters
When you think of good characters, what words come to mind? How about dynamic? Dynamic characters are the stuff of literary legend. But at the other end of the spectrum, we have static characters. Except in instances in which the author purposefully leaves the character unyielding and unchanged over the course of the book to […]
September 28, 2011 by 50 Comments Beginning Your BookShould You Put Dream Sequences in Your Story?
It’s generally accepted that agents and editors dislike seeing dream sequences in your story. This is because a story opening that features a dream is a story opening that almost always fails to present a strong hook, character, setting, conflict, or frame. Although there are certainly exceptions to this rule, your wisest move is generally […]
September 4, 2011 by 24 Comments Most Common Writing MistakesMost Common Writing Mistakes: Nothing Happening in Your Scene
What happens next? is the question we all want to inspire (in breathless tones) from our readers. But in order for something to happen next, something has to happen to begin with. At first glance, that’s a no-brainer, but it’s actually ridiculously easy to write scene after scene in which one big fat stinking hunk […]
August 28, 2011 by 5 Comments Characters7 Ways to Make Sure Your Protagonist and Antagonist Are Stuck Together
When you think of the relationship between your protagonist and antagonist, the first thing to pop to mind usually isn’t their being bonded at the hip. They’re different from one another. They don’t want to stick together. They want to get as far away from one another as possible. That’s what creates the conflict! True […]
August 10, 2011 by 21 Comments DialogueAvoiding Info Dumps in Dialogue
Dialogue is one of the most exciting and fun bits to write in any story, not only because it gives you the opportunity to hear your characters speak, but also because it’s one of the prime breeding grounds for conflict. However, this only works if you’re avoiding info dumps in dialogue. The trick to good […]
June 29, 2011 by 38 Comments CharactersWhy Nice Characters Equal No Conflict
In life, we often think of likable people as nice people. But, in fiction, that’s not quite how it works. In fiction, nice characters are conflict-sucking vampires out to sap your story’s life’s blood and leave it pale and limp in your reader’s hands. Ouch, huh? Naturally, we’d like most of our characters to be […]
June 19, 2011 by 11 Comments Writing LifeSave Readers From Boredom: 5 Fool-Proof Preventatives
The bored reader is the writer’s worst nightmare. Angry readers we can tolerate—some writers even cultivate them—because anger at least indicates emotional involvement. Boredom, however, indicates only apathy. The scary part of all this is that we don’t always realize when we’re being boring. I once turned over to a beta reader a handful of […]
December 8, 2010 by 9 Comments Novel EndingsExternal and Internal Conflict: The Killer Combination
A general writing rule of thumb states that every page of your story should contain conflict. But sometimes it can be difficult to think up enough conflict to fill the nooks and crannies. After all, your hero can’t be battling it out with the villain on every single page. So what to do? The secret […]
October 6, 2010 by 19 Comments CharactersOne Way to Simultaneously Create Conflict and Suspense
Boil fiction down to the essentials and what you find at the core is the main character’s desire for something. What your characters want is what fuels them through page after page of conflict. You’ve undoubtedly heard the saw that without conflict, there is no story. But without frustrating the character’s ability to get whatever […]
