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Vacation Break (Until 26th of May)
I'll be out on vacation until the 26th of May. I will check in occasionally to reply to messages, but for the most part, I'll be too busy baking my backside on the beach and drinking far more than necessary or, in fact, advisable. Like you, I spend most of my waking...
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Make Sure Your Manuscript is Taken Seriously
Despite there being a whole trove of material on writing well, every publisher out there keeps being flooded with manuscripts repeating the same few mistakes over and over. This isn’t a problem. Rather, it’s an opportunity if you make your manuscript stand out. Take...
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Can You Learn to Be a Better Writer?
Every aspiring writer that has hope of being published or— later in their career— making it out as a full-time writer spends a lot of time reading about the craft. They, and by saying they, I really mean you (and me), read articles like this one, hoping to find the...
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Turn Your Words Into Compelling Images
Find me a writer who doesn’t want to dazzle his readers with words. Any takers? No. That’s because each generation races to surpass the achievements of the one before. A lot of contemporary writers work to further the boundaries of the craft. But when they try too...
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The Three Writing Mindsets That Make You Struggle
When you read about writing you often hear terms like plotting and pantsing. You hear people refer to their writing method as a process, as if creativity could be bottled up or distilled into a sequence of steps. The realities of writing, however, are much more...
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Cardinal Sins of Dialogue Tagging
A few days ago, I wrote a boring and technical, but accurate post about how to tag your dialogue. Today, I’m writing a completely subjective and thoroughly opinionated piece about the leading causes of death among dialogue lines. Welcome to a ‘how not to’ guide to...
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How to Tag Your Dialogue Like a Pro
We all want the dialogue in our stories to convey emotion. We want the heroes of our stories to be real to the point of bursting out of the page, grabbing the reader by the front of their shirt and saying, "So, do you believe in me now?" Too often writers overdo the...
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The Argument Against Talent
Have you ever heard people use the phrase “She’s so gifted!” or “He has such talent!”? You must've. And yet these words never get uttered by people who achieved an objective degree of recognition in any field. Believing in talent causes more harm than good. I doubt...
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Baba Yaga and the Children Part 2
This is Part 2, read Part 1 here. As the younglings get closer, their scent makes me eyes water. The youths smell divine. Not the bland, milky smell of infants, oh no. Neither the apple vinegar odor of the adults. Bless them. They smell like the wind moments before it...
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