Everyone tells you to write scenes. To show, not tell. But what if that was … bad advice? Or at least limiting advice, because virtually every great book in history uses summary and “telling” in at least a few places in the book. And surprisingly, some books use summary for MOST of the book. And […]
When one of your characters is on drugs, you want to accurately portray the thoughts, actions, and speech of what someone would say on such a drug. But some of you might not want to take Ecstasy or Cocaine or Toad Venom in the course of your casual “writing research.” This post will rescue you! […]
Smell is the best sense to use in your writing. Yes: it’s better than sound, better than sight, better than touch. There’s something about smell that bypasses all of the normal roadblocks in our brain and goes straight to memory and animal instincts. It’s primitive. It’s elemental. If you want to really immerse a reader […]
Nothing can ruin a book faster than bad dialogue. It makes readers roll their eyes and give up on your book. Fantastic dialogue, on the other hand, reveals character, gives us a sense of place, provides tension and emotion, and helps move the plot forward. To help you out with writing dialogue, I’m going to […]
If there’s one essential element to make your fiction more entertaining, it’s writing better dialogue. Dialogue entertains readers, delights agents, and thrills publishers. If you have fantastic dialogue, it will cover a multitude of narrative sins. I’d recommend bookmarking this post so you could come back to it (because I’m about to download a massive […]
If you want practice writing some dialogue, these exercises will stretch your creative writing muscles. More importantly, you’ll learn techniques that you can apply to all your future dialogue writing. If you want to see examples of dialogue, please visit my post on 50 Examples of Dialogue Writing. Otherwise, please read on and make sure […]
It’s easy to hate dream sequences in a novel. I mean, how many bad dreams sequences have you read? I’ve read a ton, and that’s why for so long I was resistant to teach other writers how to use dreams, and refused to use them in my fiction. But after continuing to see dreams in […]
Most people have trouble coming up with cool character names, which is why some kids end up with names like Vagena (true story) or Gaylord (Gaylord Focker is truly the worst name ever). But for fiction writers it’s harder because you have to come up with a dozen or so character names for every single […]
Here are 65 examples of long sentences ranging from the relatively brief 96 words to one of the longest sentences at 2,156 words. Almost all of the really long sentences are under 1,000 words. The six longest sentences (1,000+ words) are mostly a curiosity, just to see what is possible. I hope students of writing can study these sentences to […]
This is a list of publishers seeking short story collections, and it’s the most comprehensive list on the internet. I’ve read short story collections from most of the publishers on this list and altogether they are publishing some of the best short fiction on the planet. Despite all the doom and gloom surrounding the publishing […]
