Showing your story to your readers instead of telling it is a cardinal rule in fiction writing, yet much easier said than done. One very effective way to change telling into showing is a concept called motivation-reaction units (MRUs). What are MRUs? They were first introduced by Dwight V. Swain, in his book Techniques of the Selling […]
Writers, don’t write all the time. Read too.
Writers, don’t forget to read books. Especially books in your genre that your readers would enjoy. You’re not wasting time. You’re studying! In fact, you can locate a particularly gifted writer in your genre. Get out different-colored highlighters and mark the dialogue, the words conveying emotion, the description, and so on. Figure out your particular […]
The Dot-to-Dot Method of Plotting a Story
Writing is a very personal activity, and there are probably as many “methods” of writing as there are authors. What works for one person may not work for someone else. In some instances–such as the outliner vs. the seat-of-the-pants writer–methods can be complete opposites, yet they both get the job done for different sets of […]
Get into Your Character’s Head
Hooking the reader–it’s the author’s goal from the first word to the last. This is why one of the best compliments a reader can give an author is, “I couldn’t put it down.” But how do you accomplish this goal? How do you keep the readers flipping through hundreds of pages? Much is taught about hooking readers […]
Common New Author Writing Issues
When I first joined a critique group, fresh from finishing the draft of my first novel, I expected everyone else’s writing to be better than mine. Instead, I found that most of us were at about the same level, we just had different issues that challenged us. As I moved into freelance editing, I discovered that the […]
Show vs. Tell – A Beautiful Example
We often mention that telling instead of showing is the biggest reason why we reject submitted manuscripts, and we have many articles on the Castle Gate Press website that discuss ways to show rather than tell. Recently, I came across an example of what showing looks like that is so deep and vivid that I just […]
Why Write Tight
Once you start writing, it doesn’t take long before you hear the advice to “write tight.” To the veteran authors who tell this to new authors it makes perfect sense, but sometimes it confuses new authors. After all, isn’t the idea to wow readers with your brilliant word usage? Actually, that isn’t the idea. Author’s […]
Point of view: how deep?
Editors these days will typically steer a writer to use “deep point-of-view,” or deep POV. It’s a writing device where the reader learns only what the current POV character sees, feels, or thinks — until the next scene, when the POV character may be someone else. If there are one or two POV characters, the […]
Writers, what do you do about a sagging middle?
We’ve all read books with sagging middles. The story starts out with a bang and then seems to … sort of .. meander around a bit. If we are persistent we may find that the story settles down to a strong, bang-up ending. But with a sagging middle, most readers will never get there. So, […]
For writers: Conflict is the root of your story
The root of a good story is always conflict. The more, the better. But you don’t like conflict in your own life. No one does. You’d like to be nice to your characters. Give them easy lives. Get over it. You’ve got to have conflict to keep people turning pages. How to set up conflict? […]