One of the double-edged swords of my personality is that I try really hard to find common ground with people. On the one hand, seeking common ground forges connections; it recognizes shared experiences and our ultimate shared humanity. It makes me an agreeable person on the whole. But sometimes the ground isn’t common. It’s a […]
Writing Advice
The climax should resolve your character’s desires
When you think about writing a good climax in a novel, particularly if you’re writing genre fiction you often think about it in terms of excitement and thrills. It’s when the most exciting moment happens, it’s the apex of tension. But there’s another key way I’d think about it that will help you unlock the […]
Listen to your characters, but don’t let them run away
Nearly everyone who has written a novel has had the experience of writing an unruly character who suddenly takes the story in a different direction than you anticipated. Even the best outline can quickly go up in smoke. This is a good sign! It means you’re listening to the internal logic of the character and […]
How to diagnose big picture problems in your novel
It’s very easy to get lost in the weeds when writing and editing a novel. You might spend a lot of time tweaking this or that line and fixing typos, but meanwhile, you might have gone astray on some of the bigger (and more important) fundamentals. These big picture issues can be hard to spot […]
Everything authors need to know about dialogue tags
For something as foundational as characters speaking in a novel, you’d be shocked how many authors don’t really know how to use dialogue tags. If a group of writers were an orchestra, their collective dialogue tags would be a truly bizarre cacophony. I’m here to help. In this post I’ll cover everything you need to […]
Weave exposition naturally into the story
This is the key to exposition in novels: give the reader the right information at the right time. Simple, right? Yeah. Not so much. At some point while writing a novel, especially if you are creating a world that is vastly different from our own, it will be important to explain some stuff. Maybe you […]
