Tag: writing tips

Do You Have TRUE GRIT? If Not, 7 Ways To Get It

I’m here to give some practical ways to improve psychological toughness, get better at being disciplined, and eat goals and deadlines for breakfast (they have ZERO calories, btw).

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?

Being the Best—What it Takes to Be a Rainmaker

The rainmaker is the person who gets $#!@ done no matter what. Call him a 1%er, call her a cleaner a cooler a closer. Call this person whatever you will, but I dig rainmaker. This is the person many of us want to be, because the rainmaker is the stuff of legends.

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.