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, […]
Keep Books Special
Every year during the holiday season, I tend to have people ask to get hardcover books autographed as gifts. Of course this happens at other times of the year, but it is particularly true at Christmas. As a new author, I didn’t think much about how to get books that people will treasure. So here […]
The Value of a Logline
A log line, or logline, is a simple description of a story that is only a sentence long. It boils the story down to its essence. Unlike the tagline, which is created as a marketing hook, the logline gives the basic premise of the story. Here are three loglines for three famous movies: Luke Skywalker […]
Bringing Your IP to Film
Every few months I normally have a producer or three who will call inquiring about film rights for one of my books, usually the Runelords series. It has been under option with one producer or another now for fifteen years. But by far the most interest came up recently when Jess Bezos at Amazon announced […]
Turning Points
In every story there are turning points, moments in time where the characters are forced into a new course of action and thus get unexpected results. Turning points may be simple or complex, mundane or magical. For example, you might have a character who is driving home from work, and he sees police cars on […]
On Competition
Last night I watched the popular television show The Voice—a singing competition that has been running now for thirteen seasons. I felt impressed at how powerful and poised this season’s lineup of singers was, and by how much the singers have grown in just a few weeks. The same thing happens with writers of course. […]
The Value of a Tagline
When you’re writing a screenplay or a book, one of the first things that a writer may do is create a tagline. This is a single line that describes the work, defining it in some way, and is usually used in advertising a film. For example, in the classic movie Alien, the tagline was “In […]
Are You Writing a Book, or a Movie?
In his book on screenwriting, George Lucas briefly discusses the difference in approach between writing a movie or a book. Since this question lies at the heart of so many problems that I see with new writers, I want to get into it a bit more deeply. As Lucas points out, with a movie, the […]
Writing Under Duress
When a writer sits down to compose, the less stress he feels, the better. Every writer knows this. When you’re writing, you sit down and try to go into a trancelike state where you see, hear, smell, feel, think, and do what your protagonist does. It requires a great deal of focus. But the more […]
Be Patient
Every author is impatient for good news. We’re all working toward something. You might be working toward your first sale, or maybe it’s your next novel contract. You might be trying to get a movie deal, or perhaps land on the New York Times bestseller list. That’s the way that it should be. You should […]
