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Despite readers’ presumed desires to suspend disbelief, try to keep some rational sense of reality cohering your storyline. “Not true! No way that could happen. Sorry, I’m not buying it.” If these phrases cannot be squelched in your mind when revising your manuscript, take note. Readers might forgive an author if something incredulous happens only […]

Place your characters in an environment and let them be. Sometimes writers are pace driven and have a story they simply need to get out. Often their characters are floating in space, meeting midair without a notion of physical dimension. Time and place have been forgotten. To these writers, I suggest bumping up the setting. […]

Making sure your characters’ language makes an impact Imagine an agent looking for the next big thing. She sits down with her coffee and red pen and flips open a fresh manuscript to the following interaction: The phone rang. “Hello,” answered Don. “Hi, is Mark there?” said a voice. “Sure, who’s calling?” “This is Sam,” […]

Novelists are often counseled to be specific with details, choosing one or two arresting ones to give a strong sense of a person, place, or thing. These focused items, often dubbed “salient details,” can powerfully and succinctly convey information better than the dreaded “info dump,” which tells too much and invites readers to skim. This is […]

Cara Crescent: What is it like going to a Romance Writers of America’s National Convention when nominated for two awards? It’s a little different! I hadn’t expected it to be, I wasn’t up for a Golden Heart or a Rita, after all. I can’t imagine what a whirl-wind conference is like for those nominees. The […]

More artist angst is caused by this question than any other: Is it good enough? This question is unanswerable because it’s incomplete. The true question is, Is it good enough [for what]? For novelists that usually means, Is it good enough for publication? Even that is unanswerable, because “for publication” can mean many things, and […]

Keep your story moving by recognizing when too much information (TMI) is weighing down the action. Consider this first paragraph of a hypothetical novel: Johnny woke up in the hotel bed. His grandparents Merv and Jude were going to be buried today. They died in a tragic helicopter accident while on vacation. They always traveled […]

Three-dimensional protagonists are de rigueur in genre fiction. Building a character profile is a sure-fire way to work towards this goal. Imagine sitting across a desk from this individual; taking a walk on the beach or an evening stroll through town.

If you’ve struggled to differentiate between science fiction and fantasy, let’s start with: Science fiction always revolves around the introduction of a disruptive technology.

Getting the Details of Your Dream World Story Right An early dream world we witness in the movie Inception flops because its architect failed to get the carpet right; when the dreamer is pushed to the floor, his cheek touches the carpet and his attention is then locked on the difference between it and the […]