by Melissa Tagg I wrote my first novella in 2014…and, true story, I had noooo clue what I was doing! I’d published three novels at the time. I’d written short stories in college. But nothing in-between. Since then, though, I’ve written four more novellas and they’ve become some of my very favorite writing projects. I’ve also been intentional about reading …
Three Tips for Writing a Novella that Feels Like a Full Book
by Melissa Tagg I wrote my first novella in 2014…and, true story, I had noooo clue what I was doing! I’d published three novels at the time. I’d written short stories in college. But nothing in-between. Since then, though, I’ve written four more novellas and they’ve become some of my very favorite writing projects. I’ve also been intentional about reading …
Tips for Using the 5 Senses
by Ane Mulligan Sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste create experiential fiction, a story so in-the-moment, the reader hears, smells, and tastes what the characters do. To do that, we want to show the action. Here are some tips for you. Remember to make the descriptions organic to your character. If you protagonist is a musician, her similes will be musical. …
Even the “Big Dogs” Struggle
By C. Kevin Thompson I picked up a copy of Lee Child’s debut novel, The Killing Floor. It was his first Jack Reacher novel. Originally published in 1997, this edition (the fifth edition in 2012) is a mass paperback and contains “a new introduction by the author.” It was this intro that inspired me to keep on keeping on. Child …
Story First, Novel Second
By Dennis Ricci “Literary talent is commonplace. Storytelling talent is rare.” Robert McKee, the Hollywood story guru who’s trained many of the great filmmakers and screenwriters of our generation, made that statement within the first hour of his Story Seminar, which I attended last March. McKee defined the differences between literary and storytelling talent: Literary: the ability to convert ordinary …
Men Need Romance, Too
By Glynn Young I recently reread David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, a work I had first read in high school. It was every bit as good as I remembered it. The most autobiographical of all of Dickens’s novels, it is full of intrigue, suspense, betrayal, meanness, kindness, and love. I would even go so far as to call it a …
Destroy to Create?
By Dennis Ricci “In the creative process, the whole idea is to destroy ninety percent of your work.” I heard those words eight weeks ago at the Robert McKee Story Seminar in Los Angeles. At first his principle struck me as a brute-force approach–produce one hundred pounds of ore from which you extract ten pounds of story gold. Then I …
Recalculating
By Ane Mulligan I love GPS. When I grew up in Southern California, everything was laid out in a grid; streets ran north and south or east and west. There would be an odd diagonal street, too. If you missed your turn, you simply went around the block and came at it again. Not so when I moved to Georgia; …
Writing Historical Stories
By Diana Wallis Taylor A friend of mine who took a hiatus from writing due to health concerns, went to lunch with me and said she felt God was leading her to write again. She wanted to talk about writing about her grandmother who came from Ireland possibly as a mail order bride. She wanted to know how I went …
Two Tips to Get Past “I Can’t Write”
By Beth K. Vogt I’m on deadline. Being on deadline means writing is mandatory for me. I’ve signed a contract that includes a due date to submit my manuscript to my publisher, which is an author’s ticking clock that creates tension in our lives, just like we create tension in our characters’ lives. Barring some unforeseen catastrophe, such as an …