I'm taking the poetry out of love one sad sentence at a time. :-) Yes, I have that goal. Because more often than not love is messy and nobody says the right thing at the most perfect moment.  And even if they did, the other side of the couple would stare at them like they'd lost their mind.  I mean who really goes around spouting pretty lines about ( Read more... )

I don’t know how many blog posts I’ve read in the course of my writing life that talked about the “right” way to open a book. There isn’t a “right” way. Not really. But there are plenty of wrong ways. The worst one in my very humble and not-worth-much opinion is book openings with large group scenes ( Read more... )

So Joss Whedon is my fave when it comes to character development and showing emotions on the page, though he uses the screen.  Still, he does it so well it’s simple for me to adapt his techniques to the page.

However, all I ever needed to know about tension I learned from J.K. Rowling.  Again, though, this is using an adaption from the screen to ( Read more... )

When it comes to characters, you won’t find me making cheat sheets.  I don’t interview them and couldn’t tell you their favorite foods, music, or books-unless I needed one of those things for a scene and wrote it in.  Then, of course, it would be stuck in my head for all of eternity.

Why don’t I do this though?

Because I personally think these ( Read more... )

I'd spent the day cleaning and while doing so enjoying my characters in my head.  I went to bed wanting to clean some more today and wanting to write.  And yeah, with the internal battle going on the guilt and stress started up.  I wanted to do it all.  The thing is I can't write a few words and walk away.  It takes a lot of concentration from me ( Read more... )

American vocabulary and some sometimes confused words:

Blond/Blonde- If she is blonde and he is blond then what are they? Blond and blonde are variant spellings according to Webster's. Loftily, some folks will inform you that blonde is to be used when referring to a female and if you don't do this you are plainly of the more stupid variety. Here's ( Read more... )

A good pacing for your entire book is so important. You want to make sure you have plenty of plot moving action, but of course, you need reader breathers too. If you use too much of both techniques you've overloaded your reader. Use too much fast paced action, bam, bam, bam, and you've left your readers feeling well sorta beat up, empty. Use ( Read more... )

First this morning, please forgive me if I offended anyone on my last craft post. I was on a bit of a rant anyway, but not meaning to come across in any bad way. I should have tagged it as craft/rant ( Read more... )

Pronouns 1 in fiction writing ( Read more... )

My first stop is going to be show/tell. I'm doing this first because I did one of those shockers in my sorting post. Everyone is pretty busy with Harry Potter right now, so I haven't gotten my normal amount of emails with blog posts pasted inside to tell me what so and so has to say and they are just sure it's directed to me because of what I said ( Read more... )