The World of Stranger Things!
Several of you probably saw Stranger Things a year ago, but I just saw the first episode. The homage to the 1980s is lovely, but the artistic expression in […]
Craft of Writing
The Magic of Scrivener Finally Comes to iOS!
Somehow it slipped by me this past July: Scrivener finally arrived in the App Store for iPads and iPhones after years of our waiting. Now we can take the magic
Goodreads and Camp NaNoWriMo: Resources for Authors
There are many social-media resources for authors today, and many authors eventually waste untold hours trying to promote their books through these channels. Although Facebook and Twitter can be helpful
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Writing Lessons (3.2): Conflict in Colony’s Pilot
To help explain the elements of CHANGE mentioned in my last post, I thought it would be helpful to analyze a movie or television episode. I just recently watched the
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Writing Lessons (3): Conflict, the Essential Ingredient!
The last writing lessons focused on reader expectations (genre conventions) and the four basic narrative elements (plot, character, setting, and point of view). Several popular books about making your novel
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Author Interview (Video)
On January 6, Boo Sheppard and I sat down for an interview about the release of Wolf Code. Boo is a talented interviewer, actress, director, producer, and author. For nineteen
How Robert Redford Influenced Wolf Code (And Jim and Jamie Dutcher Too)
So where did you get the idea for your book? Authors hear this question frequently. It is a good conversation starter because it asks the writer to punctuate the highlights in
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How Martin Luther King Saved Uhura: The ‘Escapist’ Power of Stories
I recently watched the documentary Trek Nation and learned Nichelle Nichols considered leaving Star Trek after the first season. During this pivotal time, she met Martin Luther King, Jr. and learned he
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Writing Lessons (2): The Building Blocks of Stories
At least since Aristotle, writers and critics have identified four building blocks that storytellers use to spin their tales: plot, character, setting (atmosphere), and tone (point of view). Stories are
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How To Find the Perfect Writing App: An Idiosyncratic Quest from Typewriter to Scrivener
Now that I’m in the production stage with Wolf Code, I finally took a moment to re-evaluate my “workflow,” as a number of writers call the process by which we fashion
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Writing Lessons (1): Expectations
I’ve been reviewing story-construction advice from writers, editors, and agents: Steven Pressfield, Shawn Coyne, Scott Meredith, and others. For my benefit, and hopefully for yours as well, I am processing
Is Writing More about Planning or Discovering?
“When you write, do you spend more time planning out the details of your story or discovering them as you are swept along in the process?” Readers often ask writers
Returning to Writing after a Long Break
This week I returned to my novel after a hiatus of almost four months. That is certainly not as long as the infamous break in Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain took from
Three Writing Lessons from Breaking Bad
Since Breaking Bad this week swept the 2014 Emmy Awards, it seems to be a good time for me to highlight three narrative techniques the show’s writers and directors exploited
How To Write a Sad Scene
Today I got to a point in my novel where there is a funeral and an emotional reunion between my two leads, who have been emotionally estranged from each other
Writing Is Immersion!
We are all babies in the water…. As I’ve been wrestling with myself to get words in my computer to finish my novel, and as I’ve been reading comments from
Anyone Can Write!
Pixar’s animated movie Ratatouille tosses around the slogan, “Anyone can cook!” The story dramatically plays with this slogan, putting a rat inside one of the most prestigious restaurants in Paris. For