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 26, 2013 by 16 Comments Writing LifeRecognizing Lazy Writing Habits
You’ve already laid the foundation for your story and given birth to intriguing characters. Some are people you knew needed to be in the novel from the beginning and some are strangers who unexpectedly appeared in Chapter Four and never seemed to leave. No matter how they were created, you need to make sure they […]
January 30, 2013 by 41 Comments CharactersHow to Know if You Should Make a Minor Character Your Protagonist
Most of the time authors begin writing because a particular character has caught their fancy. The guidelines for confirming that a character is protagonist material usually go something like this: 1. The character is someone the author cares about. If characters don’t interest you, why think they will interest readers? 2. The character has, if […]
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 […]
February 3, 2012 by 25 Comments Researching Your NovelWhat Non-Fiction Authors Can Teach Novelists
Do you aspire to write a novel as breathtaking as Huckleberry Finn? Mark Twain cheated. He brought to his fiction a skill set he developed under his given name, Samuel Clemens, as a journalist. Twain the novelist knew that a riveting opening, skillful incorporation of dialogue, and compelling details are all tools he could mine […]
June 8, 2011 by 31 Comments Point of ViewIntroduce Important POVs as Soon as Possible
By the time readers get through your first couple chapters, they will have made an emotional and intellectual investment in your main characters—your important POVs. If they’ve read this far and plan to continue reading, they’ve found the characters introduced in these chapters to be worth their time and attention. Now… imagine their annoyance when, […]
