Podcast

A New Way to Look at Dialogue

I love dialogue. It is one of my favorite things to write. I am not sure of the entire reason behind that. I think part of it is because all fiction writing seems to direct itself toward dialogue, meaning that it is usually some sort of dialogue that creates the climax of the story. Another […]

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Describing things as They are Experienced

Have you ever read a book that was written so well that made you cry? I mean one of those books that is written so well, you realize you’re a slob who is never going to make it in life, so you buy yourself three gallons of ice-cream, four bags of chips, and fourteen pounds

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A Painless Approach to Editing

https://youtu.be/zBXgQgJNgmQ What is your favorite part of writing? One of my favorite parts is planning the book. I also like the first draft, but one of the areas I do not like as much is editing. Editing can be the worst, because by the time you get to editing, you have already written the entire

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Write the Little Details

https://youtu.be/aAEoukjo_rI Mark Twain (AKA Samuel Clemens) famously wrote in a letter that he would have made the letter shorter, but he did not have the time. Mr. Twain understood that writing did not require every little detail of every little thing to be explained. He actually understood that good write was succinct. It does not

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A New Way to Look at Action

https://youtu.be/Xr3PeBqiXV8 When you write anything, you usually decide on how to write that thing based on how it feels in the world. What is the emotional connection? Does this thing I am writing contain movement? Do I need to describe it in a certain way because the way it expresses itself is temporal? Action is

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Each Paragraph is a Thought

https://youtu.be/0EKkYzoLxek When I first started to write in school, I was taught that each sentence forms a complete thought. This is probably true. When linguists look at talking and writing, they probably say that a sentence is a thought. Even though this might be true, I think you need to shift your attitude about what

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Creating Tension in Your Story

Tension is something within writing that I do not think exists on its face. I think writing requires an audience. A person needs to understand and connect to the story, and when the right person reads a piece of text, that person is able to understand the tension in the story. The writing does need

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