by Gina Burgess She looked at his expressionless face and wondered what he was thinking. She remembered that key, and the box it opened. Bernice might know. Bernice was the neighborhood gossip and tidbit collector. Betty tried to quit thinking about Bob to no avail. She looked out of her window and saw his car.
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by Randy Ingermanson “What’s naked dialogue?” “It’s dialogue without any action, description, interior monologue, or interior emotion.” “Can you do that?” “In short stretches.” “Why would you do that? It sounds stupid.” “If the main conflict is in the dialogue, then adding anything else takes the edge off the conflict.” “I don’t believe that
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by Randy Ingermanson [Editor’s note: Fodder for thoughtful planning now, gearing up for January 2019] Organization: Evolution, Not Revolution January is the big-money month of the year, I suspect, for people who run gyms. And people who sell diet plans. And anyone promising to make you over fast. We all want a revolution in our
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Here’s Randy Ingermanson’s writing advice to himself before he became rich and famous. At least it’s the advice he would have given himself when he was young and inexperienced. It is from Jerry Jenkin’s blog. You get good at writing by following these three simple steps: 1) Write a lot. The more you write, the
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by Randy Ingermanson It sounds horribly old-fashioned to say this, but once a month, I go to a critique group with real, live writers. These days, it seems that most writers communicate electronically. That’s all fine, but it’s just more fun to get together in person, so we do it. One of the most common
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by Jennifer Harris The Big Picture – Part 1 Big picture editing—also called developmental editing or the revision stage—can be an overwhelming task, especially if this is your first novel. The big picture edit is where you will start molding your raw material into a polished finished novel. This is the stage of editing where
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by Randy Ingermanson [Editor’s note: If you are not getting Randy’s ezine, I do recommend you do. It is packed with lots of thought-provoking writing, organizing, and marketing advice plus it’s plain common sense stuff.] 3) Craft: How to Measure Motivation Practically everything in fiction eventually comes down to your characters’ motivations. The lead character
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by Randy Ingermanson Every person on the planet tells lies. Which means your characters all tell lies. Wouldn’t it be cool if you knew exactly what lying looks like so you could show it to your readers? Yeah, that would be cool. I’ve been watching the TV series LIE TO ME on Netflix lately. The
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Organization: Your Weekly Review by Randy Ingermanson If you’re serious about getting things done in your life, then you need to have a regular weekly habit of reviewing the previous week and planning the next one. That sounds fun, doesn’t it? It’s right up there with changing the oil and cleaning the toilet on most
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Randy Ingermanson is a prolific teacher and writer and thinker. Here is his latest about writing craft from his eZine Advanced Fiction Writing… 3) Craft: World-Building and Social Networks There are three categories of fiction where world-building is very important: Science fiction Fantasy Historical fiction I haven’t written much on world-building, for one simple reason.
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