What’s in Your Secret Sauce?
In my book Million Dollar Outlines I discuss some of the markers that can help me discover if a book is a potential hit. I look at whether it was written to a wide audience or a narrow one, whether it transports the reader to another world, and how well it arouses powerful, desirable emotions […]
Writing Wretched Dialog Tags
If you really want to write wretched dialog, you should consider working on your dialog tags. Here are a few options that you might not have considered. I love a story that starts out with tags like this: Elena: “Did you buy the soup?” Jacob: “What soup?” Elena: “The split pea soup that I begged […]
How to Write Wretched Dialog
Recently I read a couple of stories where it felt as if the author was struggling to come up with bad dialog. So I thought I should give a few tips on how to do it properly. The easiest way to write wretched dialog is to use dialog for the wrong things. In other words, […]
Stalking the Wild Reader + Get 5 Free Books
A couple of years ago, I read an article about hounds hunting for rabbits. Researchers had found that when a hound is hunting for a rabbit, each time that the hound caught a rabbit’s scent, the dog’s brain released dopamine as a reward, to keep him hunting. It wasn’t until the hound actually caught a […]
What’s the Rush?
I see a lot of trends in today’s literature. Perhaps the biggest one is that every writer seems to be in a rush. Many new writers try to keep the pacing blazing hot. They’ve heard that in today’s world, kids are trained to think in “sound bites,” and anything longer than a television commercial bores […]
Aim for Profundity
So how do you write a story that is profound? Here are a few things to think about.
1. Does the story present a theme? In other words, does it touch on topics that people deal with on a regular basis and argue about?
2. Does the story present a viewpoint that the reader hasn’t considered before?
3. Does the tale present an actual argument, thoughtfully taking into account opposite points of view?
4. Does the tale offer an ingenious solution?
Installing a New Habit
Humans are creatures of habit. We learn how to do a thing—such as drive a car—and then put ourselves on autopilot. We don’t have to consciously think about “How do I start this thing? How do I use a turn signal? Am I giving it enough gas?” We just hop in and go. As a […]
Is Your Story’s Concept Broken?
Every story begins with an idea. The idea may come to you while listening to a song, driving a car, or reading a newspaper. You might be the kind of person who gets a dozen story ideas a day, or maybe they come to you rarely.
The Secret Power of Writing Groups
If you do this for a year, writing just ten pages per week, you’ll write a novel in the course of a year. In that time, you’ll most likely go from an “unwilling writer” who is just dragged along by your peers to becoming a self-starter.
Four Ways to Avoid a Dead-End Career
Have you ever seen a talented new writer rise to seeming stardom, only to crash and burn within a couple of years? I recall being a new writer and studying my contemporaries with a mixture of awe and fear, trying to figure out who the big writers would be in the future. Ten years later, nearly all of them were gone, even the big award winners.