I’ve mentioned Chekhov’s Gun in two of my recent posts, Kill Your Darlings and Show, Don’t Tell. There are variations of the rule floating around the interwebz, but here is the version I first read: If there is a rifle on the mantelpiece in the first act, it needs to be fired in the third act. …
Best of the blogs: the best posts I’ve read this week on writing, editing, publishing, and marketing. Okay, mostly on writing. Writing Writing Addictive Fiction What is addictive fiction? It’s fiction that keeps the reader turning the page. In this guest post at Write to Done, Victoria Mixon shares The 3 Secrets to Addictive Fiction. …
Last week I discussed one of the major writing rules, Show, Don’t Tell, where I looked at what telling is, why it’s bad … and when you need to use it. But how do you identify telling in your manuscript? Today I’m going to share my top tips for identifying and removing telling , based …
Best of the Blogs: it’s all about writing this week! This week was the monthly Author ToolBox Blog Hop, courtesy of Raimey Gallant. While all the posts were good (and you can click here to find the links to each post), there were two I thought were outstanding. Characterisation The first was from Erika Timar, …
Show, Don’t Tell is part of the September #AuthorToolBoxBlogHop, hosted by Raimey Gallant. Click here to find other blogs participating in the Hop and read some great writing advice! Or follow the #AuthorToolBoxBlogHop on Twitter, or visit our Pinterest board. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve discussed two oft-quoted pieces of writing advice (or bad writing …
Writing Characterisation Laurence MacNaughton visits Fiction University to share (!) his SHARED model of 6 Ways to Make Readers Fall In Love With Your Characters. Deep Point of View One of the best ways of enhancing characterisation is to write in deep point of view. Nancy Stopper visits Romance University to share some excellent …
Kill your darlings is another of those oft-quoted pieces of writing advice. It’s sometimes quoted as murder your darlings, but never fear. No actual killing or murdering is required. No, the saying relates to the revision and editing process. It refers to the need for us to revise or delete (kill) any word, any sentence, …
Best of the Blogs: the best posts of the week on writing, editing, publishing, and marketing. Writing Point of View One of my personal bugbears when reading (and editing) is novels which headhop. In this excellent post, Most Common Writing Mistakes: Head-Hopping POV KM Weiland explains why headhopping is a bad idea … and how …
Three of the most commonly quoted pieced of writing advice are show, don’t tell, kill your darlings, and write what you know. Of these, I suspect write what you know is the least useful. I have no scientific proof for this, but for the sake of argument, let’s agree and move on (if you don’t …
I haven’t posted for the last two weeks (did you notice?). The first weekend, I was attending the Romance Writers of New Zealand conference, listening to awesome speakers like Kristen Lamb and Christie Craig. Kristen Lamb shared lots of great tips about developing an author platform and using social media, and I blogged about that …
