When we talk about good writing, that can mean many things.  Maybe you’re saying’ it’s a genre you enjoy, or that the writer has mastered a specific technique.  Or maybe the themes resonate with you for personal reasons. But maybe you mean that the book flowed naturally and felt easy to read.  Part of that means […]

A lot of times, when writers think about keeping characters consistent, we tend to focus on the externals.  Sure, you need to make sure your character’s eye color stays the same (unless you’re doing something like I did in the Chocoverse, where some characters’ eye color changes depending on their emotions — and then you need […]

I was part of a panel discussion recently about explosions in film and fiction, and one of the biggest talking points was how important it is to be accurate vs. entertaining.  And what it comes down to: who is your audience, and what are their expectations.  If you’re writing hard (science-based) science fiction, police procedurals, […]

This month, we’re talking about ways to approach plotting your story, but you also need to consider where that story is set.  If your setting feels generic, it will be hard for the reader to imagine actually being there, and thus taking part in the story. Think about the place where you live, or places […]

Today is wet, rainy and cold.  A week ago, everyone was wearing short sleeves.  There’s a saying about Texas weather — if you don’t like it, wait a minute and it will change. The same should be true of weather in fiction.  It’s easy to overlook weather and default to sunny and temperate weather throughout, […]

I’ve been re-watching an old 80’s sitcom that recently popped up on one of the streaming services I subscribe to.  One thing I never noticed while watching it when I was a kid was the unusual use of the passage of time.  This probably wasn’t so jarring watching episodes sporadically, but watching them back to […]

I know this is something I’ve talked about before, but I just want to re-emphasize the need to be kind to yourself when it comes to judging first drafts — especially if it is one of your first projects.  It’s easy to discourage yourself, right at the time when you should be proud of finishing […]

This section of my novel writing class at UTA is covering techniques for writing different kinds of scenes. Often, when I teach this class, students will insist that their book doesn’t need one of the scene types — typically either action or relationship building scenes. I think new writers tend to shy away from whatever scene […]