Write Better Now

Sometimes you see these little bastards in text or sometimes you might want to put them in there yourself. Gasp! We aren’t here to tell you how to be fancy or not, but we are here to let you know how to be fancy correctly and not look like a schmuck. E.g. is short for exempli […]

It’s sexy to know the difference. This podcast delves into the difference between weather, whether and (God forbid!) wether. Come hang out for a quick writing tip.

Last week, I took a little break because of the holiday in the U.S., but this week, we’re talking about cause and effect in fiction novels. Troubleshooting Your Novel by Steven James has a big section about this: He suggests asking yourself these questions to fine-tune your story. And for a quicker fix, he suggests: “Analyze […]

This podcast we quickly (so quickly) talk about writing evil people’s dialogue. And a great link that we reference is right here. There are a ton of resources as Matt Bird’s site that you can check out.

This week’s podcast focuses on some advice from Roy Peter Clark. I hope you’ll join me for one of our short weekly writing tips!

Hi, I’m breaking format this week, for once. Our high school had a credible and serious threat yesterday, staff and teachers and kids were locked down for hours and I want to talk about how people telling their stories makes things much more real than cut-up newspaper reports. And that’s important. Don’t forget how powerful […]

This week’s podcast is some quick tips about how to make your scene memorable. I hope you’ll check it out. QUICK EDIT! There was a glitch with the podcasting host, but it should be the right podcast now. Apologies!

Super Important Writing Tip For When You Think Your Story Is a Little Boring This podcast we super quickly talk about something you can do when it feels like your novel got a little boring. Come hang out!

Here’s a big truth. I don’t know how to fangirl, and one time I was taking photos in Maine for the Maine Democratic Party at a house rented by famous writers and all my writer friends got excited. They squeed. They were super thrilled. My own book had just made the NYT bestseller’s list, but […]

Steve Martin had a catch phrase from his time on SNL and standup that he was a wild and crazy guy. He had an entirely different persona in the skit but you could feel it and tell he’d been inspired by something in real life and turned it into comedy through exaggeration. Now, decades after […]

The character in your story is the heart of your story. It does not matter if that character is a person or a troll or a manatee. That character is the soul of your story. Setting, theme, plot are important, but the most important aspect is creating a character that the reader can connect with. […]

Without knowing the backstory, we wouldn’t know the emotional goals of the character, the why for their tangible goals. Instead we’d be reading and thinking, yeah, he wants this. So what?

Hey! Join us this week as we talk about writing exceptional characters starting with backstory! It’s quick. It’ll make you a better author. It’s free.

It’s the last in our three-week series on scene and structure the Dwight Swain way. Let’s go. Like we said in the first week, Swain makes us writers think of basic elemental structure and creating our novels in four steps: Making cool characters. Grouping your sentences and paragraphs into motivation reaction units. Grouping those motivation […]

So last week on the podcast and on our blog where we elaborated a bit, we talked about the four main elements of story structure according to Dwight Swain, who wrote The Techniques of the Selling Writer. Those were: Making cool characters. Grouping your sentences and paragraphs into motivation reaction units. Grouping those motivation reaction […]

When I talk about novel structure, I talk a lot about Dwight Swain who wrote  Techniques of the Selling Writer. Swain has some really cool elemental aspects that he talks about and no, they don’t have to do with inciting incidents or the climax—at least not initially, and I thought it would be fun if […]

Dwight Swain has a book, The Techniques of a Selling Writer, and there’s a chapter (well many) that talk about story structure, but one specifically begins like this: “All stories are ‘about’ the same thing: desire versus danger.” Swain So that’s a really good place to start. What does your character desire (or as we […]

K.M. Weiland writes, “Character chemistry can make all the difference in creating a superior story.” So, how do you put the chemistry sizzle between characters in your story? That’s a big question for a lot of us writers because a lot of readers want romance and fire and good swoony things between characters even when the book […]

I am a big fan of boiling things down to simple components and not spending a ton of time on things blathering on, so let’s get to it, okay? Novel structure and character development are related. Not just that, they are creepy best friends. You know the kind. They do EVERYTHING together, drink the same […]

It’s this element of structure for the story. We all write them, but sometimes it seems like this overlooked aspect of our stories. I’m not sure why this is. It’s not as elemental as the word or punctuation. It’s not as long and sexy as a chapter. It’s not as easily diagramed as a sentence, … Continue reading ""