The Key to Marketing

Hi folks, Often, writers who follow my Daily Journal email to ask me about marketing. As in, “What’s more important? Social media or ads? Which social media? Amazon (or Google or Facebook) ads? My own website and a mailing list?” Okay, having your own website and a mailing list of folks who want to know about your next book is important. And some of the other things above maybe are helpful too. But the number one … Read more

On Platitudes

Hi Folks, Recently, Alison Holt, a friend and writer whom I greatly respect and whose works I admire, posted an article in PWW titled “Beware the Platitude Trap.” As I commented on her post, I was pleased, in an unnerving kind of way, that she’d relegated “Just write the next sentence” to the status of “platitude.” I was both complimented and appropriately chastised. On one hand, it’s gratifying to know folks have heard “Just write the … Read more

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

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

What Writing Into the Dark Really Is

Hi Folks, Especially if you think you already know what WITD is, please don’t skip this topic. If you do know, you will have lost only a few minutes. If you don’t, this might open up a whole new world to you. Karen, an excellent storyteller, wrote a comment on my Daily Journal back in  April. I responded, albeit briefly, because if someone takes the time to comment and the comment seems to beg a response, … Read more

Cycling vs. Editing or Revising, Revisited

Hey folks, I was handed this post on a silver platter by a commenter back in April over on my Daily Journal. Huh. I almost wrote “on the proverbial silver platter,” but to my knowledge there is no silver platter mentioned in Proverbs. Anyway, the commenter wrote “Cycling requires a tremendous amount of trust from the creative side. That you’re not going to meddle with the story unnecessarily….” I omitted much of her comment, but she … Read more

Writing Action Scenes

Hey Folks, I’ve wanted to write a post on this for awhile now, and it’s finally time. This post results directly from a high-action scene, a fight scene, I wrote back in April in my crime/action-adventure/thriller novel Blackwell Ops 5: Georgette Tilden. It was probably the best high-action scene I’d ever written, at least up to that point. This isn’t so much a “how-to” as a “how-I-do-it” post. All of this will go to my individual … Read more

What Is a Scene?

Hi Folks, What is a scene? I think it was Bradbury who said a new scene occurs each time there’s a new camera angle. I’m fortunate in that I “see” every new setting and scene in that way (camera angle, in my head). For that reason, for me, every new setting holds a scene. But how we see a scene isn’t important. What matters is that we can see (hear, smell, taste, feel) a scene through … Read more

Let Your Characters Live Their Own Lives

Hey Folks, First, an excerpt from another professional writer’s post: “…writers should strive to make each plot point arise organically from character.” Later in the same post, the writer talks about a character living an “unauthentic” life. I don’t wonder. As I write this, I’ve seen too many Nationwide Insurance commercials lately. My first thought as I read the excerpt above was “Tiny baby shoes. So close.” (grin) If only the blogger had written “writers should … Read more

Writing Off Into the Dark, Take 2

Hi Folks, I did a post on Writing Off Into the Dark here some time back. Then recently (as I write this) I got into an email discussion with a fellow novelist who also writes off into the dark. The upshot was, he wondered whether maybe — when a character does something that’s unexpected and out of character — it’s all right or even necessary to create a history for that character that would explain the … Read more