Archives for 2012

Real Life Writing

This week we echoed the pilgrims’ thankfulness to God for safe passage to a new land where they could worship freely and for His providence during difficult times. Many friends have been posting “30 days of thanksgiving” on their Facebook pages. This simple writing exercise is good not only for the soul, but also for […]

The Problem of Hopping Heads

Who’s in Control of the Scene? You have a hero. You have a heroine. You have a scene. The question is which of those characters is controlling the scene? What does it mean to head-hop, and why is head-hopping a bad thing? When embarking on any scene in a novel, you are naturally taking on […]

Weather and Character Emotions

Autumn is my favorite time of the year. I love the crisp cool days and bright blue skies. Can this feeling translate to writing? Weather can become an important item to set the temperament of the scene or the entire novel. In the movie “Blade Runner,” a Harrison Ford film just after his “Star Wars” […]

The Best Cowboy at the Rodeo is the Clown

Every rider, roper, athlete, or stunt double will tell you: before you can do the special tricks, you have to master the basics, or you’re likely to get hurt. So here’s a VERY basic writing question: What’s a sentence? Answer you learned in 3rd grade: A sentence has a noun (specifically a subject) and a […]

The Right Kind of Drama in the First Five Pages

(…Yes, there’s a Wrong Kind.) If there’s one big place to easily make mistakes in setting up scene, it’s in the beginning pages of a novel. Of course, as story-tellers, our desire is to grip our readers with something memorable in those first five pages — something dramatic. We’ve all been told how important it […]