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Sandy Tritt

Sandy Tritt is a writer, editor and speaker. The founder and CEO of Inspiration for Writers, an editing and critiquing service for aspiring writers, she has edited hundreds of manuscripts. She is president emeritus of West Virginia Writers, Inc., the state's largest writing organization, and has recently led workshops at the West Virginia Writers Conference, the West Virginia Book Festival, the Alabama Writers Conclave, and the Appalachian Writers Association (Bristol, Tennessee), among others.

Sandy's short stories and novels have received many awards and have been published in literary magazines and local journals such as Gambit, Confluence, Allegheny Echoes, Mountain Voices, The Northwestern, and Mountain Echoes, in which she was the July 2004 featured writer. In addition, she has published Everything I Know (Headline Books), Inspiration for Writers Tips and Techniques Workbook, and seven technical manuals (Phoenix Software, Atlanta, GA). She has ghostwritten one award-winning screen play and two memoirs. But more than anything, Sandy loves to teach the craft of writing, and is available to give her dynamic workshops at your writers conference.

Articles by this Author


One of the most important decisions you will make in writing your story is choosing which point of view to use. The point of view is the "head" or "camera angle" from which the action will be filtered. Depending on which source you study, there are a variable number of points of view to choose from. However, I have selected the five I think are most often used.  Read this article to learn more.


If the first rule of writing is Show, Don't Tell, the second should be Keep It Active. Active voice is what puts us in the middle of the action and allows us to feel. Passive voice is what gives us the feeling that someone is telling us a story that happened once upon a time.


Giving life to a character is one of the most rewarding parts of being a writer. It is also one of the most difficult. Too many times in fiction we witness the "cardboard" or one-dimensional character. Real characters, those we can visualize and root for and love, aren't created with the snap of a finger. Instead, they develop over time, over many hours spent together.


Have you ever read a court transcript? It accurately gives a word-by-word report of exactly what is said. But it is interesting?

Uh-uh. If we wrote verbatim the way we talk, our readers would execute us at dawn (or maybe earlier). So what do we do to create "natural" dialogue?


Misuse of dialogue tags can weaken your writing.  Learn how to use them properly with Sandy Tritt.