Are you writing a memoir? An autobiography? Do you know the difference between the two forms? In 2009, while my husband and I were on an overseas trip, I received a lesson in an outdoor classroom about the difference between autobiography and memoir. My teacher? A small brown snail. The snail lived in Indonesia, where, on the island of Bali, I met him when we stayed for two months in a traditional Balinese hotel in the town of Ubud. My husband was … Read More »

Picture books are a magical way to turn children into book lovers at an early age. While they may appear to be easy to write, there are actually many facets to making a quality picture book. They contain all the elements of adult literature—character development, plot, theme—but delivered in a compact form. If you are interested in writing children’s picture books, here are a few basics to help you get started. Word Count Getting the proper word count is important … Read More »

Whether it’s a 100 word picture book or a 100,000 word scholarly novel. To create a book that matters for any age reader—from 2 to 92—there are four things it must include. I call these the 4Hs of writing: heart, hurt, hope and humor. Let’s look at each one. Heart By heart I don’t mean sweetness or love. I mean a revealing and reveling in what it means to be human. Heart is the stripping away of artifice to see … Read More »

Conflict is the backbone of storytelling. Without it, a story is a lukewarm word puddle. And you don’t just need some of it, you need a lot to have a compelling tale. So what is conflict and how do we pile it into our narratives? Conflict is the struggle between opposing forces. It can be internal or external, and it’s important to have both in your stories. The key to increasing tension as your story progresses is to layer conflict. … Read More »

A novel (with the possible exception of some experimental form) chronicles the unrolling of fictional events over time. But unlike the real world, where we have to live each instant as it comes, like it or not, the time within our story is not relentless clockwork. It’s rather more like an accordion: it expands and contracts as we, the author, need it to, the better to propel the plot and keep the reader engaged. Imagine if we had to read … Read More »

One fact about writing stories is that we populate them with characters in various contexts—on a dilapidated farm, in an overcrowded city, on a sailboat out at sea. We put thought and time into shaping relevant scenes, but how often do we consider the flip-side of our writing reality: the context in which we do our work? What’s Our Writing-Context? Surely the time of day, the people we live with, and our nation’s societal/political environment affect our writing on some … Read More »