Great Characters Go Faster Deeper Harder

This from a guy whose first book had a tied-up woman on the cover. I should know, right?  (See my books page if you’re curious… and I bet you are.) Actually, that cover — not my idea — has caused me as many headaches as it has book sales. But that’s another blog. Most of […]

Fatal Distractions: Six Things That Will Tank Your Story Every Time

The oldest and perhaps best morsel of writing advice ever is to read.  You can’t play tennis having never seen the game (not so with golf; you can watch it until your eyeballs bleed and you’ll still suck) and you can’t write publishable fiction until you’ve absorbed enough storytelling to intuitively recognize what works. Trouble […]

Find Something to Die For. And Then Live For It.

Had a killer post planned for today.  All outlined in my head.  Woke up early to get ‘er done.  And then I went out to fetch the paper and everything changed. Life is like that sometimes. It wasn’t a headline that rocked me this morning.  It was a quote inserted above the headline that read, […]

Polishing the Revision of the Rewrite of your Updated Drafts

I hate rewriting. I know I shouldn’t.  The masters — Michner, King, Dr. Phil — swear by it.  Michner said he was an average writer but a master rewriter.  Not sure what King or Dr. Phil said, but I’ve heard at least one of them endorse rewriting as a critical element of the creative process.  […]

Best Writing Tip Redux

In the name of getting a new post up here on a daily basis (okay, 5 to 6 days a week), I wanted to explain… I’m leaving the prior post — “The Writing Tip That Changed My Life” — front and center as the latest real entry for at least another day.  Just scroll down […]

The Writing Tip That Changed My Life

As I sit here and pound on my new ebook, “101 Slightly Unpredictable Tips for Novelists and Screenwriters,” there’s one tip that haunts me, and has for the last three decades (yeah, I’m that old).  It was a milestone and a perspective that changed everything, and a reminder that sometimes the little things we offer […]

Writing Better Fiction: Inside the Six Core Competencies

You’ve heard a lot of people in your life say something like, “I’d like to write a novel someday.”  Or a screenplay, perhaps.  Or some variation thereof.  And if you’re already a writer yourself — definition of a writer: someone who actually writes — you may have thought at the time, good luck with that, […]

Drumroll… Introducing The Six Core Competencies of Successful Storytelling

Okay, maybe not so much with the drumroll… there are thousands of writers from workshops I’ve taught around the country who have heard me stump this speech like an evangelist.  There’s really nothing new under the sun when it comes to writing, it is what it is.  But there are a multitude of ways to […]

Get Published by Cultivating Your Own Personal “It” Factor.

When Simon Cowell – he of the insensitive feedback and lousy metaphors from American Idol – evaluates an unknown singer, he says he is looking for the “it factor.”  So are publishers where writers are concerned.  (Cowell is also looking for sex appeal.  Sexiness in a writer is pure coincidence; sexiness in writing, however, is […]

Why Elance Sucks Lately

I used to love Elance.  I want to love them again.  Don’t know if it’s the economy or if somebody’s asleep at the wheel over there.  I’ve made over fifty grand on Elance in the last two years, writing all kinds of stuff for clients around the world, and while it was always bluecollar writing […]