Setting the scene around your characters is always an important step in creating a story that comes alive for your readers. However, sometimes—especially during the beginning phases of your writing, the most important thing is to keep your imagination flowing steadily from one thing to the next. Often this means temporarily skipping over the details…
In the past, I have mentioned the tactic, “Write Now, Edit Later,” which encourages you to throw off that perfectionist attitude and just give yourself something to work with. Now, I’m taking it a step further: write “awful.” Just straight-up “awful.” I once made a video that demonstrates some of the many reactions I often…
William Faulkner once advised fellow writers to “Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad—read!” For an aspiring and even professional author, no advice will get you further. Time and again, I’ve heard it put similarly: if you don’t read well, you cannot expect to write well. A good book can provide an example of what constitutes…
I have another Tips & Tricks post that goes over compression—also known as the “Five Word Dialogue” rule. And the idea behind it is to take an emotional or heated conversation between characters and reduce their dialogue to five words or less, thus drawing focus to the real issues lying beneath the surface. By limiting…
There are plenty of difficult aspects of writing fiction, but one of the hardest things to do is set a scene that really comes to life for the reader. A lot of writers struggle with White Room Syndrome—a common issue in which the writing has become so involved with the characters and dialogue that the…