On Building Suspense and Creating Tension

Hi Folks, I recently listened to a 6-week classic workshop from WMG Publishing titled “Adding Suspense.” It was a useful workshop, but it became much more useful once I subsitituted “tension” for “suspense” as the instructor, Dean Wesley Smith, spoke. The substitution enabled me to separate the suspense that is an aspect of fiction from the suspense that is the old genre (think Alfred Hitchcock) and that morphed into the modern thriller genre. Suspense remains also … Read more

Mentoring

Note: The post below is an old one. To see what I offer for mentorships now, please click the Mentorships tab on the website. Thanks, Harvey Hi Folks, Three times in my life, I was fortunate enough to find and take advantage of a mentor. Doing so turbocharged my rise through the learning curve of both the writing craft and the business end of writing.  You can see the result by clicking the various menu items … Read more

Take Your Time: Part 3

Hey Folks, “Take your time” has almost become a mantra for me. I’ve pretty well mastered Heinlein’s Rules, especially the all-important Rules 1, 2 and 3. I’ve also pretty well mastered writing off into the dark, which means keeping my conscious, critical mind (the hell) out of my writing. Yet even as I’m writing, I have to remind myself occasionally to slow down, calm my mind and my characters, and record parts of the story that … Read more

Take Your Time (Revisited)

Hey Folks, As I was discussing with one of my mentoring writers a day or two ago, sometimes it’s necessary to take your time while writing. Yes, I write around 900 to 1200 words per hour. But if you do the math, that’s only 15 to 20 words per minute. And a minute is a long time. For comparison, how many WPM did you type in high school? (Mine was around 80 WPM.) So I’m just … Read more