Getting your Readers over the Infodump Hump!
“A spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down- in the most delightful way.”– Mary Poppins In some of the writing forums I frequent, a very...
Middle Grade vs. Young Adult Fiction
On a recent Writing Excuses podcast, author EJ Patten discussed Middle Grade fiction writing, and put forth a fascinating comparison between Middle Grade (fiction for grade 4-6...
A Neat Trick for Finding and Getting Rid of Passive Verbs in MS Word
I was hunting for a good site today to give advice on Passive vs. Active verbs to another writer and came across this little nugget. The article...
Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing: Writing Fast
Dean Wesley Smith wrote a good piece on his blog about writing speed, quality, and productivity. I definitely recommend reading it if you have the time. Writing...
A Way to Build more Action into your Writing
Cartman walked into a room, and then shot Stan, and then walked out. This is an “event”, it’s stuff happening without any dramatic element to keep the...
Kurt Vonnegut: 8 Basics of Creative Writing
Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted. Give the reader at least...
Productivity Hunt- Google Drive
Taking a little tip from Terry Mixon of the Dead Robots’ Society podcast with my newest writing project, I’m going to use Google Drive (aka Google Docs)...
Why don’t I like Heist stories?
So here’s something I’ve been puzzling over. I like Mystery stories- ones where a clever character tries to puzzle through a challenge and then put all the...
TeaNoWriMo Results/ Writing Update
Well, I tried to make July 2012 in Teacher’s Novel Writing Month, hoping that using this month off could help me boost my creativity and give me...
Pixar Story Rules in LEGO!
Alex Elyar on Slacktory has taken Emma Coat’s Pixar’s Rules of Storytelling and turned them posters illustrated with Lego for great visual results: This is only about...