Tag: how to
A Show of Hands—Who Here Is a Genre Jumper?
The film, Jumper (2008), is a movie obsession of mine and I’ve watched it countless times. The main character, played by Hayden Christensen, discovers he has the power to jump to any place in the world, simply by thinking about it. There’s a villain (Samuel L Jackson), more than one chase scene, and a romantic […]
How to Write about Something You Know Nothing About
I recently began taking piano lessons as an adult, and I can now tell you this for certain: I am no musician. On the first day, when I told my piano teacher that I wanted to learn to play ragtime, she said: “Why does everyone always want to tackle the hardest music first?” I didn’t […]
Dialogue and Subtext: The Spoken and the Unspoken
Subtext is a key element in transforming blah serviceable dialogue into dazzling dialogue. Why? Because great, genuine sounding dialogue happens at two levels: what is spoken and what is unspoken. What is said and what is meant. Children, drunks, iconoclasts, and people with impaired social skills tend to say exactly what they mean all the […]
On Co-Writing
For better or for worse, co-writing is a sort of marriage and therefore should not be entered into lightly. A quick Google search will tell you that there really isn’t a lot out there regarding how-to tips. My co-author, Melissa Storm, and I had to learn a lot by trial and error. From this experience, […]
When to Keep Secrets and When to Tell Truths
Good fiction starts with a good story. Good historical fiction adds a well researched and articulated sense of time and place. Good historical fiction based on a well-documented era in one’s own family provides an author the rare opportunity to bring a loved one’s legacy to the future. Writing my recently released novel, Even in […]
How to Plan a Box-set
Late last year, I collaborated with six other members of the Alliance of Independent Authors to create a limited edition box set of novels. While collaborative efforts like this have been fairly common among genre fiction authors, we were not aware of another multi-author collection of contemporary novels. Why? The idea was simple. We wanted […]
How to be More Productive
I’ve been thinking a lot about my writing productivity and questioning my daily routine. I picked up Daily Rituals: How Artists Work from the library because like the author, Mason Currey, I want to know how great artists organize their days in order to be creative and productive. Currey does not pretend to offer certainties […]
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