How do you immerse the reader into your scene? Make them feel they are there with the character? By adding the right amount of descriptions, emotions, and inner thoughts to your already solid scene. Edit your scene. Highlight all descriptive phrases and sentences in a color. Highlight all emotions in another color. Inner thoughts get [...]
Filed under: Writing Tip on August 22nd, 2012 | No Comments »
Remember when you started writing and you used exclamation points all over the place? Then one day a wiser writer explained that exclamation points should be used minimally, very minimally. Same thing with a few other symbols, like ellipses, semicolon, colon and emdash. (Note, The Chicago Manual of Sytle is the prevalent reference, but not [...]
Filed under: Writing Tip on November 17th, 2011 | No Comments »
Many are more experienced that I, so here is a quick tip that I used recently when making final editing revisions on a manuscript. One of the last things to do in editing is to highlight weasel words, passive voice (was/were), general weak verbs, tighten your prose words, and general words that you tend to [...]
Filed under: Writing Tip on October 28th, 2011 | 2 Comments »
Make sure you start the scene on the run – meaning in the heat of the action. Most times, in your first draft, you will meander into a scene. Make sure to keep the reader on the edge of their seat at the end of the chapter as well as the beginning! Though you are [...]
Filed under: Writing Tip on June 24th, 2011 | No Comments »
When editing, look at your specific or action verbs to spice up your manuscript. Don’t have a character walk into a room, have them stroll or rush–that allows the reader to feel what the character is doing. Deanna Carlyle has a wonderful list that might either help you with a fresh and active verb or [...]
Filed under: Writing Tip on October 19th, 2010 | No Comments »
I attended Scene Therapy by Susan May Warren and Rachel Hauck for my continuing education class at the 2010 ACFW conference. Tension is what drives a novel. And they showed the participants how to create tension in each and every scene. I’m not going through every thing that was taught in the class, but I [...]
Filed under: Writing Tip on September 30th, 2010 | No Comments »
The 2010 ACFW conference was superb. I missed each of you who stayed home for whatever reason, and pray that you’ll be able to attend in 2011.My two favorite parts of the conference this year were volunteering, so I figured I’d write a blog post about the experiences! The first volunteer activity I performed was [...]
Filed under: Writing Tip on September 29th, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Writing is a lonely business. Anyone out there who writes for a living knows that. These days, at least we have electronic friends. And with conferences, we get to meet those electronic friends. Before SCRIBES (the large group critique format) there were small ACFW critique groups. I was invited to join one about a year [...]
Filed under: Writing Tip on September 28th, 2010 | 2 Comments »
The concept of show don’t tell is huge, so this is a tiny piece of it. A great craft book that includes a section on show don’t tell is Jeff Gerke‘s The Art & Craft of Writing Fiction. The entire book is an awesome craft book, but his section on showing is very helpful. I’ll [...]
Filed under: Writing Tip on August 23rd, 2010 | No Comments »
Before you call your work complete, here is a short list to consider for your work to be tighter. Make sure your nouns and verbs are strong Can you take the “s” off the word? In a list, make the words go from short to long (words or phrases) “the <noun> of” = can you [...]
Filed under: Writing Tip on July 29th, 2010 | No Comments »
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