When I was in college, studying landscape architecture when it didn’t interfere with my busy beer-drinking schedule, the dean liked to hammer home a recurring concept. “Genius loci,” he would say, his eyes agleam, his bowtie aflutter. “Spirit of the place.” You must understand a site fully before you design for it, he argued. Ideally, one should sit upon the ground in the middle of the place and meditate. Throughout a full year. Feel the sunshine. See the dappled light … Read More »

by Mary Lois Sanders & Sarah Nell Summers Weaving Description into Your Scene Organically, i.e., no info dumping! First, what do we mean by ‘organically’? Simply put, the descriptors are not a list lumped together, but details woven into the body of the narrative. This weaving should be seamless for the reader, too. Information he needs to know, that comes as he needs it. This difference between ‘info dump’ vs. ‘weaving’ is critical. An ‘info dump’ stops the plot and … Read More »

The middle-grade mystery that began its life as a tiny glimmer of an idea is finally done (I’m pretty sure). You know how it goes – just one more tweak here, change a word there. But at this point, I’m hitting the ‘save’ button one last time and calling it done. Now, what do I do with those great scenes that didn’t make the cut and the ideas that are still swirling around in my head? I’m considering a series … Read More »

I stumbled onto flash fiction in 2010 while working with PANK Magazine as a proofreader who also wrote interviews. Prior to discovering flash fiction, my focus was writing poetry to compete with at poetry slams and writing shorter poems for publication. A poetry slam is a competition started in 1986 by Marc Smith, a Chicago construction worker. You have three minutes to perform a work of your own construction, no props, costumes, or musical accompaniment allowed. Your poems are scored typically … Read More »

We’ve talked about the parts of a scene—beginning, middle, ending. Now let’s think about the whole short story or novel. Consider the most recent novel you’ve read that you really enjoyed. The first scene hooked you, the last scene satisfied you. And the middle scenes propelled the story forward at a pace that kept you engaged and enthralled … at least I hope so. What a waste of time if not! But what made those scenes engaging? What enthralled you … Read More »

Regardless of the genre you write in, we can all claim to be authors of speculative fiction of some kind or another. Every story speculates about something. Our imagination is built from even the simplest what if question. What if this happened, what would happen next? What if this confronted our heroine, would she succeed? What if this transpired, how could our hero escape? Whether you write mysteries, thrillers, romance or mainstream literary, the journeys of your characters are driven … Read More »