Who, What, When, Where, Why? Every journalist and journalism student has those five questions burned into their brains. A reporter tries to answer the five Ws within the first paragraph […]
Not someone else’s process, but yours. This is not another article on how to plot your book or get into your character’s heads. Those are both important and necessary goals. […]
Before you start writing your novel, it is my firm opinion that you need to have at least a general idea of what the story is (plot), who’s in it […]
Go for it! Nobody is born published. Not even the Nobel prize winners! I usually start with my characters. They need physical descriptions, mannerisms, quirks, and back story. You need […]
…co-authored with Annette Broadrick. Too many workshops give the impression that writing should be a formulaic, paint-by-the number activity. If we were to guess, we would say that most novelists […]
The book has to end happy. The last chapter has to end happy. The others? They don’t. In fact, they shouldn’t. Because a chapter that ends with everything happy is […]
So, you’ve always wanted to write a novel. Or maybe you’ve got to write a novel fast to meet a deadline. Novice or beginner, you are faced with where, how? […]
Writing the first draft has always been the most grueling part of writing a novel for me. Always one to attack my challenges head on, however, I used to set […]
There are about as many ways to write a novel as there are writers. Some plot extensively, some write with no idea where the story is going at all. Some […]
