The world of writing

I wrote this story in a creative writing class a couple years ago, and while I got an A on it, I'm starting to second guess it's quality..Am I telling too much versus showing? This is just a portion of it, but please tell me what you think of it...

Leonard ran his fingersthrough his thick brown hair as the smooth bourbon ran down his throat.Internally, he thanked God that his French mother’s genes overpowered hisBritish father’s and he wasn’t balding yet. H...

Opening sentences and their impact on the reader.

When I started this page, I did a lesson on the importance of the first line of a book and I quoted the phrase, “The first sentence sells the book, the last sentence sells the next book.” The purpose of that lesson was to explain why an opening paragraph of description about how the trees look, how the houses look; the mundane detail of the surroundings are a loss. You will not keep the interest of your readers and more impor...

Reality of writing

Beginning writers are like waves breaking to the shore, and I was one of them once. Someone said to me today, “You shouldn’t give me absolutes. Just because that’s your style, doesn’t mean it works for me.” If I had a dime for every time I heard that…you get the picture. More importantly, contrary to what that writer said to me, I too believed what she believed, that regardless of what the “Experts” said to me, times are...

I think we can all use a lesson in passive voice. Sometimes we are too rigid on what we think should and shouldn't be used. Passive voice, in and of itself, is not always a negative and not always frowned upon, however, it is important that we are aware of what it is.

Defining the passive voice

A passive construction occurs when you make the object of an action into the subject of a sentence. That is, whoever or whatever is performing the action is not the grammatica...

Have you ever really thought about what spurs us to write? Is it about desire or is it about fear?

Sometimes I write because I have something I want people to learn, to experience, to understand, but much more often it is about what I am afraid of. My short stories and my novels have one common thread in them that if you know me, you can find rather easily. I am afraid of growing old. Dorian Gray best describes my malady. I work so hard to perfect my stories because I believe that there...

There is something about sleep deprivation that feeds my creativity, and because of that I tend to do some of my best writing late at night, REALLY late at night. However, because time is such a valuable commodity when you have four little boys, I don't get the chance to burn the midnight oil as often as I would like. This weekend I did get one night to work until four a.m. and while I was working there was a motivational speaker on, and even though it is only background noise, I couldn't hel...

When you write a story that has depth in characters, such as a dramatic novel, character development is vital to the success of the story. It is important that you create characters that aren't carbon copies of each other, so creating a bio for each character is an important step in preventing this. One method, and one that surely works for many writers, is to jot down character points for each character on a 5x7 card and tuck it away as a reference during your writing or you can do what I do...