A reader said… This paragraph introduces my 3 year-old character, Colin. The boy is little, not quite four. Like his dad, he’s got fiery red hair. His parents believe that he’s possessed of a quiet intelligence that transcends his age. But most parents feel that way about their children. He seems to get on better…
Back in Tips 5-8 I did a series on creating descriptions for settings and characters. I recommend you read those carefully. The current tip is designed to add on to what I said there. When I read unpublished fiction I often get no sense for what a place (and, to a lesser extent, a person)…
One reader said… HI Mary. Thanks for the opportunity to ask questions. I was wondering your thoughts on swearing in a CBA geared novel. What I mean is, the first few chapters of my WIP, my character is angry with God..well, angry at EVERYONE. She’s lost to a world of drugs/alcohol, etc. Anyway, her character…
The tall man sat at the conference table. The doctor took a sip of coffee and looked at his presentation notes. The Lithuanian orphan scratched his head. The left-handed man jotted down a note. The Harvard grad readjusted his chair. Karl checked his watch. The old man wiped his glasses. The widower looked around the…
Today’s question comes from TWV Literary Agent Panelist, Terry Burns: I belong to a lot of social media sites, facebook, twitter, writing groups, etc. I don’t have time to participate a lot but I watch what is being discussed and who is doing it. Sometimes I see something being discussed that I think maybe I…
I wish I could teach folks how to create flow of language. For me, word choice and syntax is a feeling. I’ll write something and it feels clunky or out of place. So I rewrite until it sounds like poetry to me. I have my father to thank for that, I suppose. He was a…
At some point, every novelist hates his book and wants to blow it up. Verily, veriliy, I say unto you, you will eventually summon the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. Here I’m talking about giving your novel an overriding sense of urgency that increases the suspense with…
I haven’t done a purely formatting tip since Tip #2 so I thought it was time, especially after all that marketplace talk. Beginning novelists don’t always understand that there are real rules when it comes to formatting dialogue in fiction. They also don’t always realize that the reader has come to understand that certain formatting…
Speech attributions are the “he said/she said” bits of dialogue in fiction. What are speech attributions for? Three things: 1) they identify who is speaking; 2) sometimes they tell us some-thing about the way something is said; and 3) sometimes they’re used as “beats” to manage the…
In my opinion, the author should seek to disappear from his or her fiction. What in the world does this mean? How can the novelist disappear and the novel still get written? I don’t mean the world should have fewer novelists (may it never be!), but that the author should seek to immerse readers so…