Game Changer: Create An Inner Dialogue Within your Hero, and Your Villain

Things we’ve talked about before: –         your hero’s inner demon, something that likely is explained by backstory and is an obstacle to what your hero seeks to accomplish in your story.  The exposure (to the reader) of this inner demon reveals a second dimension of character depth beneath the exterior one dimensional façade seen by […]

What Writers Are Saying About… This Stuff

I’ve dropped nearly 500 posts on Storyfix.  About 425 remain in the archives, the others having migrated to various ebooks.  Sometimes, when that little voice tells me it’s time to get something new up, I feel like I’ve circled the wagons and don’t have something fresh or worthy enough to add. And sometimes that’s when the […]

Further Perspective on Author Branding — You Are Forced To Choose Who You Are

And of course, to not choose is, in fact, a choice.    One with consequences that are just as defining for your career as a writer.   This is a follow up to my most recent post, entitled “We read (INSERT YOUR NAME HERE) because…”   Several who commented online, and a few who contacted […]

We read (INSERT YOUR NAME HERE) because…

We write our stories for different reasons.  If one of them is to make a career of it — not simply to publish, but to last — you need to be able to finish that sentence for your readers with clarity and purpose. You need to be playing the long game. When you look at the regular names […]

“Scheherazade” — A Guest Post from Art Holcomb

by Art Holcomb Two pieces of paper hang above my desk.   One is a quote (more about that next time) and the other is the picture below. It is from One Thousand and One Arabian Nights. As the tale goes, the Persian King Shahryar would marry a new virgin each night only to slay them […]

Storyfix: A Facelift, a New Approach, a Second Founding

Change is good.  Feels like a root canal sometimes, but in the end, when the swelling goes down and you look in the mirror, that tuned up smile has an extra twinkle in it. If you’re on the site reading this, then you’ve probably noticed the changes.  A little more than subtle, yet not quite a […]

The Question You Should Ask Before You Ask “What if?”

I had lunch last week with a writer friend, who is awesome.  She brought her lovely sister, and I brought my lovely and awesome wife, and over omelets and gluten-free bread we had a grand time commiserating the experience of writing serious stories seriously. Like most writers, my radar for “what if?” propositions is always […]

Two Mini-Workshops. Right here, right now.

Massive content.  Listen to one, watch the other.  I recently did a 60-minute live “interview” with Cheryl Fusco Johnson at KRUU FM, 100.1 in Fairfield, Iowa.  What began as an interview about “Story Engineering” (the book) ended up being a 60-minute primer on the Six Core Competencies of successful storytelling (the ticket to getting published).  […]

Warm Hugs for Writers

A warm & fuzzy new ebook you can, and should, take to bed with you. Because it’ll hug you back.   If this writing thing is so hard, which is what we hear all the time from writing teachers and tired old sages (me included on both counts) and around the cookie table at writing workshops, why are […]