Voice in fiction is crucial—but also elusive. First, writers must consider their own authorial voices, then the story’s specific narrative voice, and last but certainly not least character voices. In fact, if you’re writing fiction, the most important voices on the page technically aren’t yours, but your characters’. All of ’em. And they all need […]
October 31, 2022 by 46 Comments CharactersTop 14 Tips and Tools for Creating Unique Character Voices
December 9, 2019 by 48 Comments Beginning Your BookCritique: 10 Ways to Write a Better First Chapter Using Specific Word Choices
The one thing all writers are trying to do is write a better first chapter. First chapters are do-or-die territory. We know this as writers because we know this as readers. Most of us make our reading choices after scanning the first few paragraphs of a story. Sometimes we know if we want to go […]
March 4, 2019 by 98 Comments CharactersHow to Write Emotion: An Experimental Study
Not too many years ago, I thought an accurately portrayed scene naturally caused readers to experience the emotions that the characters would logically feel in such situations. Not true! As Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi explain in The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression, we must take our innate skills of observation and […]
February 11, 2019 by 73 Comments ProseCritique: How to Use Paragraph Breaks to Guide the Reader’s Experience
Paragraph breaks are something akin to a writer’s turn signals. They silently—sometimes almost subliminally—tell readers what’s about to happen and how they should react. As you may remember (or not) from school, a paragraph break in technical writing is meant to indicate a new thought. (I have clear memories of being required to find and […]
October 15, 2018 by 95 Comments ProseWords Are Radical! (or, How to Cherish Language)
Years ago, I was hiking with someone around the Scotts Bluff National Monument in western Nebraska. A bird flew over our heads, black against a metallic July sky. A lover of all things beautiful, my hiking partner was the first to point it out. I shaded my eyes. “Cool. What do think it is?” He […]
April 2, 2018 by 55 Comments ProseHow to Decide Between Plain Prose and Beautiful Prose
Truth is beauty. Beauty is truth. This is perhaps nowhere more evident than in art, which deliberately and consciously explores both. Words, in particular, are the explicit context in which humanity presents, investigates, and shares its truth. Perhaps more than any other art form, writing gives us a blatant venue for exploring the truth side […]
March 2, 2018 by 25 Comments Prose6 (More) Ways to Improve Your Book by Writing Humor
Humor is like any other type of writing: setup, payoff, setup, payoff, lather, rinse, repeat. That’s all there is to it! Okay, that’s not all there is to it. Humor is a craft that can be learned and perfected. With that in mind, let’s look at how a joke is crafted. How to Write Funny: Set […]
February 26, 2018 by 79 Comments ProseDon’t Write Scenes–Write Images
When you think about it, the transformative power of the written word is no less phenomenal than the technological miracles of computers, televisions, and smarts phones. Both are alchemy. Technology uses wires and circuits to turn code into the wonder of light and color. Writing does exactly the same thing. Little black squiggles on the […]
November 20, 2017 by 35 Comments NarrativeTips for How to Choose the Right Sentences
What is writing but choosing the right words in the right sentences in the right paragraphs in the right pages in the right chapters? But even though words and sentences are the smallest of integers within our storytelling, they’re actually one of the most complex. How do you choose the right sentences? Is it a process […]
November 6, 2017 by 73 Comments Most Common Writing MistakesMost Common Writing Mistakes, Pt. 63: Purple Prose
Words, glorious words! Fellow logophiles, were we not initially drawn to writing because of our sesquipedal amours? We love words. We love big words, arcane words, chewy words, beautiful words. We love combinations of words that are bold, poetic, eloquent, and sometimes even showy. So it’s little wonder many of us risk creating purple prose. […]
