The Art Of Description: How Much Do You Need?

One of my favorite books is Stephen King’s On Writing, and one of my favorite parts of that book is when he describes the rabbit. Remember that part? After a few sentences, readers pictured a white rabbit with a blue number eight on it. King used the illustration to describe the telepathic nature of reading and…

Avoiding Repetitive Redundancy In Your Writing

Yes, the title was intentional. I borrowed it from the department of redundancy department. Telling a story in a concise way should be a goal of the novelist. I say should, because based on the length of some books and what I’ve seen both in published works and in works I’ve critiqued, this isn’t always…

Get Out Of The Incessant Editing Loop

Editing is a vitally important step in the writing process. I don’t know about the rest of you, but my first drafts suuuuuuck. Did you see that episode of Mythbusters where they literally took a piece of shit and polished it to a lovely sheen? That’s the editing process. Though one would hope that the…

Show And Tell Matters More To A Writer

Anyone who’s spent five minutes in a writing group has heard it: that’s telling. You need to show it. I bet the writers among us are groaning a little. Everyone else is scratching their heads. Let’s start with the basics. Telling occurs when you, well, tell the readers what’s happening. Tim was angry. Showing gives clues…

20 Things I Want For 2015

There’s a hashtag going around on Twitter today: #20ThingsIWantFor2015. I thought the presence of “20” was amusing, because who can write about 20 things in 140 characters? Fortunately, I have a blog with unlimited characters. MWHAHAHA! That sounded more maniacal than I planned. Anyway. I’ll count down from 20. Because New Years. Some are serious,…

Ramping Up The Tension, One Block At A Time

My kids were playing Jenga this afternoon. You remember that game, right? It’s the one where you remove a block from a tower of blocks and add it to the top of the tower. So the tower always has the same number of blocks. Since you’re taking the blocks from the lower parts of the tower…

My Novel Has Love Handles: Dealing With The Mushy Middle

I seem to write about problems with writing as they’re occurring. Right now, I’m struggling to fix a section of one of my novels. The section begins right after the middle plot point, or the point that forces the characters into action, which eventually leads to the climax. Here’s the problem: the middle plot point…