Art Holcomb on Rewriting Your Novel or Screenplay

The 6 Most Common Problems in a Rewrite By Art Holcomb Okay, so . . . You’ve just finished your first draft – or maybe your 10th draft – of your work-in-progress and you suddenly realize that there’s a problem you haven’t considered. You’ve become so intimate with the characters and their actions that you […]

Wisdom, Wit and War Stories from An “A-List” NY Times Bestselling Novelist

An Interview with Robert Dugoni, author of “My Sister’s Grave.” If you’ve haven’t heard of My Sister’s Grave, you haven’t been paying attention to the fiction world in a while.  The book was a recent top-1o New York Times Bestseller, currently the #1 legal thriller on Amazon, has (as of this writing) 6,437 reviews on […]

Interview With a Breakout Romance Novelist

Heather Burch talks process, craft, her amazing ride as One Lavender Ribbon continues its global explosion, and what’s next.  For her, and for all of us who write. One Lavender Ribbon, by Heather Burch,  as of this writing has 4,285 Amazon reader reviews, the vast majority bearing four or five stars.  That alone is worthy […]

Useless Humor: Fun With Words…

… called paraprosdokians. Apparently Winston Churchill loved paraprosdokians (often mispelled as araprosdokians). These are figures of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected, and frequently humorous. Here are 29 to get you giggling. Where there’s a will, I want to be in it. The last thing I want […]

James Scott Bell on Writing Smarter

James Scott Bell needs no introduction.  But I won’t let that stop me.   Jim is the author of the modern classic within the craft niche, Plot and Structure, a perennial bestseller that has influenced tens of thousands of writers.  He has several other craft titles out, as well, including two recent books that he […]

Novelists and Screenwriters: Concept Equals “Situation”… and Then Some

Concept is, bottom line, more a CONTEXT for the premise-driven story that emerges from it.   Sometimes the context of a story is indeed situational.  Sometimes, though, it is merely a contextual framework that could apply to any number of situations. “Concept,” as a powerful storytelling tool, continues to befuddle and amaze.  I’ve heard from […]

The Rules of Writing … or Not

Nothing polarizes, angers or at least frightens writers quite like the use of the word “rules” when discussing craft.   The word is rhetorical.  Contextual.  Imprecise.  Misunderstood.  At least where writing fiction is concerned. It is the wrong word to describe the essential criteria for what makes a story work, or causes one story to […]