Writing and What-not’s

Baby Boomer Tales

https://babyboomertales.podbean.com/e/ep-159-the-tractor/ A great reminder to Never stop trying: At age 23, Tina Fey was working at a YMCA.At age 23, Oprah was fired from her first reporting job.At age 24, Stephen King was working as a janitor and living in a trailer.At age 27, Vincent …

Do You Need an Editor?

I’m constantly amazed at writers who come to our writers group or any group with a story they’ve written to have it critiqued. From the first it’s easy to tell whether they’ve really serious about having others opinions or they just there to have their egos stroked. They sit …

The Adverb Crutch.

Amateur writers wind up succumbing to at least one major pitfall, the use of adverbs in dialogue tags. Adverbs are those pesky –ly words that modify verbs. For example: happily replied. said angrily. quickly asked. pensively said. In fiction, adverbs tend to weaken your writing. …

Two Bits Worth 25 Writing Tips from Fiction Authors

Writing success boils down to hard work, imagination and passion—and then some more hard work. Here are 25 writing tips from some best selling fiction authors. Print a copy to put on your desk, home office, refrigerator door, or somewhere else noticeable so you can …

5 Senses—How to Invoke Them In Your Writing (Denice Whitmore)

We all use description in our writing. We describe characters and settings, actions and reactions. Most of what we write is description of some sort. By using the 5 senses, we can broaden our descriptions from a list of attributes to an experience for our …

Your Book Cover

A popular idiom “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” might be true in an idealistic sense, but it usually refers to judging people by their appearance. There is a reality for publishers and the book industry in general. For the vast majority of readers the …

Deep POV and How it’s Used.

Deep POV is the third-person subjective taken a step beyond the normal third-person subjective. Deep POV shows your story through the eyes of one or more characters—one at a time please, avoid any head-hopping. Deep POV goes into the head and heart of a character, taking your readers beyond the …

Stick To Said

I started to write an article on dialogue, but in research, I found this article on the Reader’s Digest site and I could never say it better than Ms. Trupkiewicz. This is a copy of her article on dialogue. The link to the article is:http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/there-are-no-rules/keep-it-simple-keys-to-realistic-dialogue-part-ii The following …

Which of these sentences is correct

1. Winston tastes good like a cigarette should. (This is a famous ad jingle?) 2. He spends money like a drunken sailor. 3. He lied on the witness stand like one would expect a guilty person to do. 4. My cousin looks like Greta Garbo. …

Jump Start Your Next Novel.

If you’re beginning a new story, you need to figure out three things at the start. First, where does your story start? It doesn’t start with the weather or a prologue, giving six to ten pages of back story. What is the inciting incident that …

Dialogue Tags vs Descriptive Beats

In any good ‘how to write fiction’ book you’ll find at least one chapter if not two on the use and formatting of dialogue. Since dialogue can reveal a writer’s strengths or weaknesses, crafting good dialogue can be difficult. There are many pitfalls that writers …

Watch Your Language

One of the jobs I had in my younger days was doing mobile home maintenance for Palm Harbor Homes. On a trip down to Yuma Arizona, I was traveling with Bill. The entire way to Yuma he pontificated on the deterioration of the English by …

Domain Name Ownership

My friend Artur has been battling a problem for a client. I though I might share a word of warning for any who read this and are considering purchasing a domain name. It doesn’t matter if it’s for personal of business use, purchase the name …