Ah, the dreaded glitch. We’ve spent months or maybe years on a story, alternately elated and despairing that we’ll ever find the end. Or maybe we wrote right through the first draft to the end and have spent that time fleshing our baby out, adding meat and fluff scene by scene or line by line. And then we see it on the fifth read-through. The plot hole big enough to fly the starship Enterprise through. Or maybe it’s only Mini-Cooper … Read More »

Chapters of twenty to thirty pages used to be the adult fiction norm. When I started attempting to write novels, I crafted long chapters—and proud of it. Guess what. Nowadays I’m cutting those long chapters by half, thirds, and sometimes even by quarters. What changed? I think technology transformed reading habits. When I was learning to write, transitions were a big deal. Writers were advised never to change a scene, setting, or time period without preparing the reader with a … Read More »

Walter Joseph Schenck Jr. is no stranger to the struggle of writing. Yet how does someone who’s won many literary awards, been a featured writer in Publisher’s Weekly, and been on Kirkus’ coveted Recommended Read List more than once—a clear success—find writing difficult? Schenck took home three awards from the Royal Palm Literary Award banquet this year: The Dahris Clair Memorial Award for Plays, First Place Published General Catch All, and First Place Published Stage Play. He shares his thoughts … Read More »

I took this image of a carpet of autumn leaves years ago. I love it for many artistic reasons, but I thought it would be fun to apply the various components of this image to some of the aspects of the creative writing process. It’s a pleasant scattering of leaves, in different angles, layers, and directions. My creative mind thinks about a story plot that is multi-faceted, includes different characters and the stories/baggage they bring with them, and I consider … Read More »

A Velcro Moment is a bit of writing that sticks with a reader. Velcro, you probably know, is a strip of fabric with tiny “hooks” that “mate” with another fabric strip that has smaller loops. These strips attach to each other, until pulled apart. (Thank you, Wikipedia.) Isn’t Velcro a perfect image to illustrate readers getting hooked on your writing? How do we make our writing unforgettable? National Book Award winner, Barry Lopez, offered gems of advice about this a … Read More »

The creative process between cartooning and writing is similar for this Royal Palm Literary Award winner. Dana Summers writes suspense when he isn’t working on his comic strips The Middletons and Bound & Gagged as well as editorial cartoons. His novel Downhill Fast won Unpublished Book of the Year in the 2018 Royal Palm Literary Awards after it won First Place for Unpublished Mystery or Crime and First Place for Unpublished Thriller or Suspense. Dana discusses his book and creative … Read More »