Letting Characters Take the Wheel
“When characters are really alive, before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in their action.” ~ Luigi Pirandello I made one great mistake in the writing of my first novel (and, of...
View ArticleMy Ode to Scrivener: The Top Ten Reasons it’s so Great
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways… I am a Scrivener fangirl. My love of this beautiful piece of software is, perhaps, slightly extreme. For me, it is more than just the wonderful tool that...
View ArticleDifficult Decisions: Putting Your Characters between a Rock and a Hard Place
Our characters are ever facing decisions. It is the choices they make that map the course of our novels. (Books that fail to create character driven stories generally feel like a long string of “and...
View ArticleStories with Subtlety : An Examination of The Searchers
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about subtlety in writing, both in characterization and on the small-scale prose level, and why it is so affecting. My husband and I have made a project of watching all...
View ArticleGetting My Writer Groove Back: 6 Steps I Took to Increase Productivity
I’ve been frustrated with myself these past few weeks. You see, my dream is to write full time, and, temporarily, I have the opportunity to live that dream. I’m currently back in the states while my...
View ArticleThoughts of Inscape and Instress in Relation to Fiction
One of my favorite literary figures has, for many years, been Gerard Manly Hopkins. In my book, the man is a genius and a massive inspiration. I’ve never encountered use of sound and imagery to rival...
View ArticleMy Confession
Let me begin by saying that this blog post is difficult for me to write. It’s something that I should have written many weeks ago, but every time I opened the document, my mind would shy away. It would...
View ArticleStaying Positive as a Writer
In my experience, there are three kinds of writers: there are those who believe they are the reincarnated talent of whichever all-time-great they admire, whose first drafts are beyond reproach, the...
View ArticleOn Writing Good Dialogue
Good Dialogue–it’s the difference between: “Look, Your Worshipfulness, let’s get one thing straight. I take orders from just one person: me” And: “I wish that I could just wish away my feelings.”...
View ArticleI took up Brazilian Jiu Jitsu to Write Better Fight Scenes…and Fell in Love
I’ve always been fascinated by marital arts (a fact surprising to none of my readers, I’m betting). Growing up, I watched my dad moving through his Kung Fu forms in our living room, and I developed a...
View ArticleDemonstration of Duet Display: How I Use My iPad When Writing
I’ve been saying for ages that I want to take a crack at vlogging, but I’ve been dragging my feet about it–mostly because of my rather spectacular degree of awkwardness on camera. However, I’ve been...
View ArticleLetting Travel Inspire Fictional Settings
I’ve written about how wonderful travel is for writers before (here), but I’ve been wanting to address more specifically how I try to inform my fictional settings with the texture and wonder of real...
View ArticleMy Pre-Writing Exercise: Blocking out the Scene
I am not a fast writer. To my readers who have been waiting such a long time for my third book (Sorry! Sorry! It’s coming!), this is probably painfully obvious. I’ll likely never be the speediest of...
View ArticlePre-Writing Worksheet
About a year ago, I blogged about my pre-writing exercises (I recommend checking out that post for more details on my process. I’m going to be brief here). This step in my writing process was a big...
View ArticleScrivener Work Flow for Scenes with Many Characters
Last week I was working on a difficult scene in which my protagonist is thrown into a new situation full of new characters. This is always challenging to execute, because I don’t want to overwhelm the...
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