David Farland: Story Doctor Writing Tips

Identifying Your Book’s Target Audience As a new writer, you might not have given a great deal of thought to audience analysis. I’ve known good

Many writers will recommend that as you edit your tale, you do a final read-through so that you can see how the story sounds. After

I got this question from Jim: “So much advice to writers is about suspense, or scene goals, or characters overcoming conflict. One published author told

Ernest Hemingway sometimes compared writing to a boxing match, and in a certain sense he was right. Whenever you step into a boxing ring, there’s

The midwinter is actually my favorite time of the year to write. There aren’t many conventions or writing workshops in January and February, since organizers

As a judge, I’ve just finished my second pass through the Writers of the Future contest stories for the first quarter, and several times I

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

The first thing that I seek in a great story is originality. You may not realize it, but the most common problem with stories is

Have you ever watched a butterfly in flight and tried to figure out where it will go next? The butterfly will soar three feet in

You may not know it, but you’re a racehorse. If you look at writers from a publisher’s point of view, that’s exactly what you are.

Sometimes as writers, when we give writing advice, we often give advice by telling “How I write” instead of “How to write.” This idea came