Many of us have some bad habit in our writing that we need to fix. It may be that we do too much telling of the story or too much dialogue. My personal bad habit is skimping on the descriptive elements in the story. I think it has something to do with being in too big a hurry to tell the story. So what do I do? Well, for starters, I start adding more description. There’s the no-brainer. But how? I’ve never been a fan of description for descriptions sake. It has always felt like padding the story. No, I’ve got to spend more time using the character’s various senses for one thing: sight, smell, taste, touch and sound. Now […]
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Don’t Be Afraid of Small Steps
For those of you who are hoping/expecting to write something and become overnight sensations, let me be the first to tell you… well, keep dreaming comes immediately to mind. Honestly, I’m not trying to crush your aspirations. It’s just that overnight success usually takes a LOT of work in advance. You might argue that people like JK Rowling, Christopher Paolini and the like were instant successes. To that I would suggest you dig into their publishing journey a little deeper. In both cases (and in dozens more) a lot of rejection and self-sacrifice happened before they hit the big time. The fact that they actually did have such astonishing success is a factor of luck as much as talent (some […]
Read moreWhen Not to Write
For those of you who feel that writers must write always, don’t get up in arms thinking I’m espousing (how’s that for a $50-word?) a movement away from writing. What I’m talking about is only writing what’s relevant to the story. This question came up from friend Dan Absalonson via voicemail for ‘Get Published’ and the more I think about it, the more important it feels to me personally. Dan’s question, in a nutshell, was when should I be changing scenes and POV and how do I explain all that nitty gritty stuff that happens in between? Before I answer that, let me stage a bit of an example. The story is a typical fantasy quest story. Our heros have just […]
Read moreI think I’m finally growing up
My wife might argue with me about this, but I’m specifically talking about growing up as a writer. When I first started down the writing path I can honestly say I had visions of fame and glory. Mind you, those visions didn’t last very long as I started to research the entire writing life. All the research I did served to make me more paranoid about my own writing’s quality and the actual chances any of it would ever see the light of day. I (somehow) managed to get past the paranoia and self-doubt and kept writing. It wasn’t great, but it continued to get better. I began to submit the occasional piece. When I did so, I waited and […]
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