WRITERS, STORYTELLERS, SINGERS, AND ARTISTS all have one thing in common: we want our work to be a unique expression of who we are as individuals. We want some aspect of our personality, our worldview, our inner selves or “souls” to be perceived in our art. The trick is learning […]
YOU’VE FINISHED the first draft of your book, and you feel great — for about five minutes. You know your next step is to revise, but the task seems overwhelming. You’ve spent months, maybe years, writing those chapters, those pages, those carefully crafted scenes. And you’re supposed to . . […]
WHETHER YOU WRITE MEMOIR OR FICTION, developing your main characters on the page so that they seem like living, breathing beings is just plain hard. Conversely, it’s easy to make them into caricatures instead of characters. And a weak or unbelievable character will jar your reader out of your story’s […]
You know how it is, when you’re reading a really good book, you become so immersed in the story that you forget you’re reading? It’s like you’re inside the story, experiencing its events vicariously and viscerally — your body tensing and heart pounding during suspenseful moments, or tearing up when […]
THIS IS THE SECOND OF THREE ARTICLES, in which I discuss Bruce Springsteen’s memoir, Born to Run. Today, I’m exploring how Springsteen controls pace, voice, and tone in his writing. Voice and Tone: Springsteen describes the characters in his life I think one of the ways Springsteen’s voice and tone […]
THIS WEEK, I have the honor of hosting Jerry Jenkins, author of more than 180 books with sales of more than 70 million copies, including the best-selling Left Behind series. Twenty of Jerry’s books have reached The New York Times best-seller list (seven debuting number one). This article was originally posted […]
IT’S THAT TIME OF YEAR, when I begin planning articles and content for the following year! Please take 3 minutes to complete the following survey and help me provide the most relevant and helpful content for you in 2018. As a thank you for your time and thoughtful feedback, when […]
Do you write about life, love, the meaning of family, and relationships? Do you include ideas about education or politics or spirituality? All of these topics are abstract concepts that readers understand according to their lived experiences. This means that the concept of “family” will be understood in two completely […]
DO YOU STRUGGLE with writing dialogue? If so, you’re not alone. Writing dialogue that feels natural and moves the story forward has always been a challenge for me. For that reason, I’ve had to study dialogue — what makes it good (effective) and what makes it bad (ineffective). – Before […]
WRITING MEMOIR IS A LOT LIKE WRITING FICTION — only with all the made-up parts left out. You have scene (place and time), which is inhabited by characters, dialogue, and action. You have a point of view, usually first person, through which the narration occurs. In addition, memoir also includes reflection, in […]
WHEN LEARNING THE CRAFT OF WRITING — which, as far as I am concerned, is a never-ending state of being — we often hear the refrain that we should “show, not tell.” “Showing” means writing in scene, using physical actions, sense-based details, and dialogue to create the story, rather than explaining […]
ANYONE WHO HAS WRITTEN A MEMOIR KNOWS that it’s hard work. Not at the beginning, necessarily, but when you’re part way through, and that nice, round idea you had of your story has become fragmented by scenes and summaries of scenes, and reflections about those scenes The memories aren’t clear […]
