Category: Writing Tips

Writing Kick@$$ Action Scenes–Hook! Cross! T.K.O.

It’s Batman chasing Superman through James Bond’s porcelain collection. Broken glass, bones and promises everywhere. But here’s the problem: It reads like an academic lecture about 17th century German philosophy. If the style can’t convey your action in an edgy and dramatic way, even the most wicked scene structure won’t help.

Charles Dickens—Using Symbol, Theme & Allegory to Create Enduring Stories

Why are there certain stories we just can’t get enough of? Why do some stories fade away while others become staples for every generation? Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol has been made into all kinds of movies, plays, cartoons, musicals and there are countless variations of Dickens’ original story: A grumpy old miser who is transformed …

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How to Sneak In Any Amount of Information & Maintain the Fictive Dream

As an editor I have some pretty standard red flags I look for, but a REALLY common blunder is the dreaded information dump. Some genres are more prone to this than others. Science fiction and fantasy can be particularly vulnerable. How DO you keep the pace of the story and still relay about the prophecy, the starship, the dragons and the dragons prophesied to have starships?

3 Simple Tricks to Create a Character OH SO Different From YOU

Have you ever written a character you thought you couldn’t portray well because he was too different from you? In this post, Alex lays out three secrets on how to make a character like that come to life.

Writing About LOVE—Ditch the Cliches & Turn Up the Heat in Your Romance

Here is the problem though: No feeling in fiction is harder to convey than love. That’s because being in love is a feeling that escapes any description– it’s too exciting; too strange; too magnetic; too rare. So how can you do it better?