Where Normal Need Not Apply
There’s a graphic making the Twitter rounds called The Female Character Flowchart. It walks through the different female stereotypes—from The Trophy and Damsel In Distress to The Shrew and Ugly Duckling—and it’s interesting reading. The chart’s goal is to avoid those stereotypes to create a “Strong Female Character”. Some writers […]
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In my last post, we had a lively discussion in the comments that prompted me to think about things authors do to trick readers. Some of these are good and some of them I call “cheap author tricks”. What makes the difference? Whether or not the trick is faked. We […]
If you’ve seen some of my previous posts (Are Writers Conferences Worth It and Finding Life’s Balance), then you know I’m a big fan of Twitter. I’m not alone. Today, I invited Kristen Lamb, social media expert, to guest blog about how Twitter can help writers. Take it away, Kristen… […]
During this two-week long Critique Week extravaganza we’ve looked at how criticism can help us improve, we’ve learned what a successful critique partnership looks like, and we’ve identified our strengths and weaknesses so we’ll recognize our perfect critique partner. Now let’s put that all together and talk about how to […]
It’s probably a given that all good writers want to get even better. Last week, I talked about how we can use criticism to improve our work, and I gave a peek inside a successful critique partnership. My critique partner and I work very well together, and we certainly lucked […]
Today marks a milestone for me. My first ever appearance guest-posting on another blog. Woohoo! I’m at Roni Loren’s blog today with a post on a critique partnership that works: mine. With help from my critique partner, Margeanne Mitchell, I put together a humorous peek inside our relationship and tried […]
Are you *gasp* less than perfect? Hey, it happens. I know I’m not the only one. No matter what aspect of our life we’re talking about, whether we’re in search of parenting advice, the secrets to magic tricks, or kicking our writing up a notch, we can read, experiment, and […]
In Part One, I proposed my Matrix theory for describing action and scenes in stories and talked about why it works. In this post, I’ll explain how to successfully use the technique to add details, both with narrative and dialogue—and how not to use it. So as I mentioned last […]
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Last time, I explained how to avoid dumping information into stories and how dialogue is often used incorrectly to convey details to readers—the “As you know, Bob” technique. It just so happened that my friend Simon C. Larter posted a related article with info dumps in dialogue that worked that […]
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Info dump? Infamous? You better believe it. The most egregious offender even has a name: the “As you know, Bob.” Imagine dialogue along the lines of, “As you know, Bob, Jane is our sister.” *cringe* Does anyone actually speak like that? Would you ever tell someone something they already know? […]
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