Despite what some people say, you can absolutely learn to be funny. No one is born with it any more than you were born with the ability to write. And it’s something I can teach you right now. I’ve been a newspaper humor columnist for over 21 years, and have written several humorous radio plays, stage plays, and short stories. I’ve also had long discussions with other humor writers about different humor techniques, and my father was even a humor … Read More »

If you write science fiction or fantasy, or aspire to, you’ve probably heard of worldbuilding. In a nutshell, worldbuilding means constructing an imaginary setting. If you do and it’s consistent and logical within its own parameters, however outlandish they may be, you’ve won readers. Build a world without really thinking it through and veteran readers of the genre will abandon it in droves. And what better teacher to start with than one who pioneered worldbuilding? H.G. Wells was a thinker … Read More »

Writing first chapters makes me think of wallpapering a room. If you don’t get that initial strip of gingham checks on right, every new addition will be askew. The finished project will be totally off kilter. I have a novel I’ve been revising for years. The first chapter never quite worked, but instead of fixing it I kept on writing. What was wrong about the first chapter bled into the second and things just got worse and worse. Big mistake. … Read More »

Good historical fiction is doubly hard to write. Not only are there the usual problems of writing good “fiction”: well plotted, richly detailed, stuffed with fascinating characters. But “historical” demands that whole additional burden of research, so that the end result is a convincing representation of a past time and often distant place. Why should we even bother? Now Feels Pretty Good In the first place, we and our readers find it entertaining, like a good History Channel program. It’s … Read More »

Besides the satisfaction of seeing our words published, what other basic characteristic might writers have in common? Hint: it makes publication possible. Annie Dillard lays it out for us in her book, The Writing Life, when she relays a mini-story of a fellow writer who had a student who asked, “Do you think I could be a writer?” “Well,” the writer said, “do you like sentences?” We don’t find out what the student thought or did after that answer, but … Read More »

Our main characters need to be people our readers can relate to, admire, or even aspire to be like. On the other hand, if we go too far we risk creating a Mary Sue or Marty Stu. Mary and Marty are unrealistically gifted, universally loved, movie star handsome or beautiful, amazingly talented, wonderfully wealthy, unbelievably lucky, the stuff of daydreams. To be believable, even the most relatable character needs to have some personal flaws, some things they aren’t good at, … Read More »