Incorrectly describing character movements ranks surprisingly high among common writing mistakes. Within the confines of a story, a character can do only three things: he can think, he can talk, and he can move. Out of the three, the first two lend themselves most gracefully to written literature, since words are their very foundation. Movement, […]
January 8, 2014 by 84 Comments Description5 Reasons Not to Describe Your Character in a Mirror
This week’s video offers five good reasons you shouldn’t describe your character by having him look at himself in a mirror. Video Transcript: Today, I want to discuss a simple but important “don’t” of how to describe your character. And that’s simply this: Don’t describe your character by having him look at himself in […]
June 2, 2013 by 39 Comments Most Common Writing MistakesMost Common Writing Mistakes: Overexplaining
Authors are in a tough spot. Readers expect us to supply them with enough info to help them imagine our story worlds and our characters’ emotions in vivid details. But readers also expect us to never provide too many details. They want us to explain; but they never want us to overexplain. Overexplaining can manifest in several […]
April 3, 2013 by 23 Comments Narrative5 Signs Your Book Is Too Long
I love long books. Those big fat hardbacks that are too heavy to even hang onto and you just have to let ’em flop open in your lap? Yum. There is something so delicious about being immersed in an amazing story and knowing you have three hundred pages still to go before you reach the […]
February 8, 2013 by 48 Comments NarrativeThe Secret to Show, Don’t Tell
Gone are the days of the long narrative passages we used to see in novels written by greats like Dickens and Steinbeck. Even though literary prose is still highly praised and found in many bestselling commercial novels, the trend over the last few decades has been to “show, not tell.” Meaning, readers prefer scenes in which they are watching […]
February 6, 2013 by 30 Comments Story SettingsHow Much Setting Description Is Right for Your Story?
Sometimes certain writing directions can make setting description sound like a bad thing, to the point that writers don’t dare include more than a skimpy paragraph of setting description lest readers cry foul and claim the book is boring. However, the far side of this slippery slope is also a pretty boring place. Setting is […]
August 19, 2012 by 16 Comments DescriptionAdd Muscle to Your Fiction With Unity and Contrast
Our eyes see the world in shades of light and dark. Without one or the other, details fade into invisibility. The painting technique known as chiaroscuro (which as Lemony Snicket would say, is a big, big word meaning, quite literally, “light-dark”) makes full use of the contrast between light and dark to pull details into […]
June 20, 2012 by 11 Comments DescriptionHow to Improve Your Story With Specificity
Today, I want to ask you a question. What is the single greatest contributing factor in bringing your prose to life? Since you’ve probably already read the title to this post, you probably already know the answer is specificity. So specificity—what exactly am I talking about, and why is it so great? What I’m talking […]
May 18, 2012 by 20 Comments DescriptionVisceral Reactions: Emotional Pay Dirt or Fast Track to Melodrama?
Are visceral reactions emotional pay dirt or a fast track to melodrama? The answer of course is: both! But let’s back up the cliché truck. The word “visceral” is thrown around quite a bit, but not everyone understands what it means. A visceral reaction is an instinctive, gut-deep bodily response to a stimulus or experience. Without getting too complex, neurotransmitters (chemical […]
March 7, 2012 by 18 Comments NarrativeAre You Giving Readers the Tools to Understand Your Story?
One of the reasons story beginnings are so tricky is the sheer volume of information the author has to share with readers, just to make sure readers understand what’s going on. This grows all the more true when your story is presenting unusual or unexpected characters or settings. The trick is sharing the information without […]
