Protect Your Kitty
If you’re going to become a professional writer, you need to make sure that you can support yourself while you write your novels. That’s because once you write a novel, it might take time to sell it, to edit it, and to actually publish it—and even if you end up with a bestseller, your royalties […]
The Perfect Story: Guidance
A perfect story guides the reader’s attention—his senses, thoughts, emotions, and imagination. Once I was reading a story by a new author. The author had a fine imagination in many ways, but was terrible at guiding the attention of the reader. For example, when an important figure was to make a first appearance on a […]
Take Courage
As a writer, are you willing to take the steps that you need to, in order to succeed? The other day, I got to visit with my nephew. He works as a very successful physical therapist, and said, “You know, I often have people ask me how to become a physical therapist, and so I […]
Writing on the Run
Many wannabe writers are pretty sedentary. We tend to watch too much television, read too much, play video games too much, and chat online too much. When we do work, we sit too much. But over the years I’ve noticed that the most productive writers tend to have one thing in common—they exercise. One of […]
The Perfect Story: Promise
I’ve been working on a series of articles on what constitutes a perfect story, and so far I’ve concentrated on some of the qualities that such a story would have. I could go on in that vein for another week, but suffice it to say that a perfect story will exhibit plenty of virtues that […]
The KAV Cycle, Part 2
In my last article, I talked about how you can begin to maximize your audience by appealing to all of the senses, and I spoke about appealing to kinetic, audio, visual, and scent in particular. In theory, this will help you reach 100% of your audience. But as with most elements of writing, it can […]
The KAV Cycle, Part 1
Each of us is accustomed to taking in information, to learning, in our own way. Some people learn things by doing. For example, a mechanic might learn how to use his hands to manipulate wrenches and screwdrivers so that he can tear apart a car engine, virtually in the dark. While another person might find […]
The Perfect Story: Economy
Some virtues that would be found in a perfect story almost go without saying. For example, a perfect tale would be economical. There are a number of ways that a story can lack economy. Most authors probably think here that I’m going to harp on descriptions that are overwritten, or conversations that don’t need to […]
The Perfect Story: Flow
In considering the virtues of a perfect tale, some things come to mind that ought to be mentioned but that are rather easy to discuss. A Perfect Tale Flows Logically You don’t have to tell the reader everything in a perfect story. You can withhold information in order to create mysteries. You can mislead the […]
The Perfect Story: Engrossing the Reader
It almost would seem to go without saying that a perfect story would be engrossing. Yet I find that rather than just enumerate the virtue, I need to explain a little about how that is done. Have you ever read a story that you just could not put down? Have you ever read a story […]