Blue Square

Writer

Take Your Time to Publish

Take the time to learn the skills, to learn the craft, to develop your talent. People will be reading books forever. You have time. Take it.

Constructing Show, Don't Tell

Our brains use inductive logic; thus, pairing two specific actions together gives the readers all they need to understand.

Deeper Than "Show, Don't Tell"

In order to SHOW your character’s emotions, you need to know WHY the character feels that way. This is not as simple as it sounds.

Secrets of "Show Don't Tell"

Narrative will not deliver a feeling alone. Instead, zoom in. Give the image of an action that creates the feeling. Here's how.

Write Small

As you improve, focus more on the nuances of what you know and not the novelty of something new. I call this learning to “write small.”

Master Your Dialogue

To write dialogue, invert the reading process. Don’t use dialogue to deliver information. Use it to deliver emotions and psychology.

Dialogue & Building Character

Invert your craft. Start with the deeper psychology, and then write what they'd say because of the feeling, not to explain that feeling.

Top Five Dialogue Techniques

Think about how dialogue affects many other elements of writing all at the same time. Below are my Top Five Dialogue Techniques.

Because I Like It

I gave myself full permission to stop writing. I wasn’t going to write any more that night and I wasn’t going to write any more the next day

It's About Story

That’s why, to me, the worst Jeffery Eugenides book will always be remarkably better than the best Dan Brown book.

Thinking 4th Dimensionally

There are less-discussed and less-understood Time factors, such as the past perfect verb tense or the order of phrases and clauses.