You did it! You completed an amazing writing journey, and you’ve got something you’re proud of and excited about—a novel, short story, memoir, etc. After long (endless?) hours of writing, tears of frustration, and feelings of self-doubt, you finally typed those last, two word: The End. Before you whisk it off to your editor, consider these suggestions to put it in the best possible shape before handing it off. The Hiding Obvious You’ve done the spell/grammar check that comes with … Read More »

Storytelling to entertain means skipping the boring parts. Why narrate the time it takes a character to travel from one point to another or to dress or eat or perform other mundane activities? The reader wants meaningful action and gradually increasing conflict. By plotting the story so one event causes another and so on, we choose what happens and the order in which events happen. There will be gaps in time and changes in setting and point of view from … Read More »

January is about beginnings—new resolutions, new ideas, and hopefully, new first drafts. While thinking about beginnings, I thought about one of my first writing classes, high school journalism. I don’t remember much from the class except that a good lead should always include the answers to four important questions: the 4 Ws. These are; who, what, where, and when. After a good lead, we were taught the story could move on into the meaty details of how, or why. Good … Read More »

I happened across this photo of a stone wall project I completed a few years ago, and it made me think about how I might compare it to the construction of a story. Tools, materials, planning, and brain power translates to creating a wall (or a story) that will stand the test of time. I thought it might be fun to break apart this project into story-building elements. Plan for the End Result Before you head out to the landscape … Read More »

Almost every writer I’ve ever spoken to has a particular type of scene that is their nemesis—the scene they skip over with a quick “insert (blank) scene here”. And usually that is either the fight scene or the sex scene. Now if you’ve heard me speak at a conference, you know my issue is NOT the sex scenes. Those are my favorites to write. However, fight scenes give me fits. I don’t skip them. I would hate leaving my most … Read More »

With the holidays so recently behind us, January seems like a good time to reflect on wrapping packages—that is, on tying up all the loose ends in our plots, down to the smallest questions in a reader’s mind. I wrote recently about reader expectations, and here’s a biggie. Although a certain ambiguity may be thought-provoking, basically anyone who picks up your book has the right to find her questions answered. This embraces all the areas where any mystery has existed: … Read More »