writing advice
writing advice

writing advice

How to Know When Its Done

At some point, after all the writing and revising, your book will be done. Unfortunately, no one knows when that will be. Every author has to figure that out for themselves—and sometimes figure it out anew with each new book. It is more of an art than a science, but I will try to help you with what I know about when to pull the trigger and publish the thing. Most of us know what a first draft looks like. Some are sloppier than others, but most have flaws of some sort in the structure or the prose. Sections might...

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Worldbuilding: How Much is too Much?

There is no such thing as too much worldbuilding. The greater the depth of the author’s knowledge of the setting of their book, the better. There is no detail too small or universe too big to be fully fleshed out in the author’s mind—or more likely, in extensive notes, maps, timelines, character bios, Plottr portfolios, and whatever else the often chaotic mind of the author chooses to store this information in. Unless you put it all in the text of your book. Hemingway said, “The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above...

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Em Dashes, Semicolons, and Other Less Used Punctuation

Once you get past the basics, punctuation starts to get weird. That’s because a lot of the less used punctuation are more about personal preference than prescribed usage. Even the basics can be this way; commas can often be placed or removed without violating any grammar rules or affecting comprehension. But that doesn’t mean they’re not important. All punctuation helps give your writing rhythm, give it a voice unique to you. And the odd ones even more so, as they are distinctive yet often overlap in meaning so that the choice of which one to use is esthetic rather than...

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The Hero’s Journey

The Hero’s Journey is a story structure based on Joseph Campbell’s seminal work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, where he lays out the commonalities to stories, myths, and legends that have been told for thousands of years. The structure works because of that: there is something in the structures and archetypes contained in the Hero’s Journey that continue to resonate, even in the modern mind. 50,000 years is an evolutionary eyeblink; we are not so different from our ancestors who told these tales around the life-giving fire, or scrawled them in pictograms on cave walls. Campbell’s work was adapted...

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Genres for the Independent Author

Genres are a fascinating part of the writing profession. They mean nothing and everything; they are both limiting and freeing; they are arbiters and arbitrary in near equal measures. I began my career as a traditional author. As such, genres were the purview of publishers and booksellers. I wrote the book and then they told me what genre it was in. That didn’t mean I didn’t know what genre my books were in; it just meant I didn’t care if they decided it was something different. It was their job to sell those books, and if they thought it would...

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Signaling Your Genre from the Start

If you’re an independent author, you’ve probably done a lot of work on your title, blurb, and cover. Don’t screw it all up with the first line of your book. When a person picks up your book, or uses the look inside feature on Amazon or other sites, they’re going to read the first few lines of your book. It’s likely the final thing they’ll look at before buying your book. So, not only does it have to be a good intro into your book, it also has to not screw up the sale. But how do you do that?...

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Writing Action

I am going to get right to the point and tell you the secret of writing action scenes: It’s not about the action. Like everything else in writing, it’s about character. A lot of people think reading action scenes is boring. And done poorly, it is. It’s not a movie. We can’t add camera angles and sound effects and a chaotic score that all drive the excitement; we have only words. But with those words—and clever choices of what words they are—we can do something that movie action scenes have a much harder time doing. We can illustrate character. Who...

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Simplicity

“The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.” Walt Whitman Way back when I was a poker player and coach, there was a thing I liked to point out to my students. “Poker is a simple game,” I said. “You want to put a lot of money in the pot when you’re winning, and put as little in the pot as possible when you’re not. And absent compelling reasons not to, that’s exactly what you should do.” I point this out, not because I think a ton of you are...

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Writing That Resonates

Resonate. It’s the word I use most often when talking about writing. But what does it really mean? Take the word home. The dictionary definition is “The place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household.” But that’s not what anyone thinks when they hear the word. They think of their home. What it looks like, what it sounds and smells like, how it feels to be there. They think of the people who occupy it and the often complex emotions they engender. They think about history and family and legacy and…well, you get the...

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What to Do When the Writing Won’t Work

Sometimes the writing just won’t work. The words won’t come, or they’re all wrong when they do. Even if you manage to type something, you delete it seconds later. You’re blocked. We’ve all been there. Don’t panic. It will come back. Meanwhile, I have some ideas to get it back sooner rather than later. Though it’s important to match the techniques with what you’re trying to write and where you are in the process — you’re going to need different techniques when you’re starting a short story than when you’re in the middle of a novel — no matter where...

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