Category: Writing Advice

A friend of mine sent me an excited email about getting an acceptance from a small publisher about her non-fiction book. She sent me some of the terms of her contract and a number of red flags hit me right away. Here are the two biggest ones: 1- Editing: For $260 they’ll do the full editing…

Creating Believable Characters In order to create believable characters, your characters need to be complex, emotional beings. They need to show their emotions, suppress their emotions, be conflicted by their emotions, and paralyzed by them. They can easily do one or more of these during any scene in your story. Emotion will drive their behavior…

This article is about the various mistakes of fiction writing that I’ve encountered as a mentor and teacher in the MFA program at Seton Hill University. You will see these in published novels, however they are a sign of weak writing and they’re easy to fix when you’re revising your manuscript. Passive Voice: Can be found all over…

You enjoy writing stories but don’t know where to go from here. First off, getting good feedback about your stories from fellow writers is a good idea (families can be very supportive – almost too supportive as they’ll tell you everything is wonderful to avoid hurting your feelings – ever watch the US television show American Idol? Remember…

Dialogue is an important aspect of a fictional story. And one of my favorites to read and write! Like any writing technique, there are dos and don’ts involved, good examples and bad examples, and some guidelines. Below is what I’ve discovered about dialogue. Why use dialogue? -> Dialogue is a great way to give the reader needed…

Let’s face it, action scenes are difficult to write. Writers must find the perfect balance between description, dialogue, inner dialogue and character emotions, or as I call them The Fantastic Four! Action scenes in movies and on TV shows are unrealistic at best and often impossible without the aid of special effects. Description: Description of…

Literary agents work for you. They will submit your manuscript to publishers, negotiate contracts, and go to bat for you provided they like your book and take you on as a client. Editors prefer to receive manuscripts from agents. Agents will only send books they are excited about and are well written. In fact, most publishers will…

You have a story that’s finished, it’s been critiqued and revised and is as typo-free as possible. It is ready to go! Congrats! Now what? You need to decide if you want to publish your book traditionally published(i.e. through a publisher) or if you want to self publish it on your own (a.k.a. Independent (Indie)…

The most common question I am asked after I tell people I write fiction is, Where do you get your ideas? I wish I sold a book for every time I was asked this! 🙂 I know that would make my publisher happy. People are naturally curious and sometimes it does seem like writers have a secret…

“Talent is long patience.”— Gustave Flaubert “What’s more important: Talent or Persistence? Talent is more important, but useless, in the majority of cases, without persistence.”— Unknown (to me) If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these…