Double What You Know About Storytelling with 5.5-hours of Intense Mentoring — An 11th-hour Workshop Opportunity

Portland and Northwest Writers (and writers who like a road trip) take note. This will be unlike any writing workshop you’ve ever attended.   Next week I’ll be teaching at the 50th Annual Willamette Writers Conference, held at the airport Sheraton in Portland (August 1-4). This will be my tenth appearance at that conference over […]

An Interview With Bestselling Author Robert Dugoni

Just possibly the hottest author in the business right now. If you think that’s hyperbole, consider this: shortly after his new novel — The Eighth Sister — launched in early April, Amazon updated their Author Ranking list, and he was just that: he was in the #1 slot. The second most popular author that week was some […]

Download available : Unlock the Power of Criteria-Driven Story Development

… presented by Larry Brooks as a live-narration, Power Point visualized lecture, with a run-time of one hour and twenty minutes. This virtual workshop from Writers Digest University was part of WD’s recent Mystery and Thriller Virtual Conference. The download is available HERE for $79.99 SESSION DESCRIPTION This workshop is about elevating the efficacy of your writing […]

The Writer’s Balance

November 24, 2017 A guest post by Stephanie Raffelock It takes courage to get up every day and write. You have to love what you are doing and you have to believe in yourself to do it.  It’s humbling for me to be the perpetual student of craft and of story. And sometimes on a […]

A Few Storyfix Updates

Greetings. I know I’ve been MIA for a while now… my apologies. I also know I led with this exact opener a few months ago… embarrassing. I get it. Colleagues are telling me I’ve basically lost equity in this site. I prefer to think of it as hitting the Pause button. I’ve never intended to abandon […]

A Return to Hardcore Story Craft

Hey storyfixers… I know I’ve been MIA for an inexcusable length of time. Thanks to Art Holcomb for filling the void a few times while I went about the business of reinvention, rejuvenation, ducks-back-in-a-row stuff, and a general inventorying and understanding of why people read my work, why they come and then go away, and […]

The Bermuda Triangle of Storytelling

The goal of today’s post is nothing less than to explain why writing a novel that works is hard. As opposed to, say, a pile of 50K-plus words poured into a steaming pile during, say, the most recent month of November, that doesn’t. But if you break it down, there really aren’t that many different […]

The #1 Challenge Facing Writers Today

It’s not what you think it is. And you’re already a part of it. Art Holcomb and I — you know Art if you been here a while; if not, Art is one of the foremost writing mentors and lecturers in the country — recently made a 30-minute audio recording, a teleseminar, really, that ended […]

Is There Such a Thing as Natural Writing Talent?

I take this one head on today over at the Killzone.com, in response to a new article in a major magazine that basically says, “don’t worry about structure, you have the natural DNA to create a structurally-sound novel, based on your gut instinct.” Not everyone is going to be happy. **** Here’s a great learning […]

Help Reinvent Storyfix 3.0

Let’s work together… help me help you make your stories great. Many of you reading Storyfix have been with me here for years. I’ve gotten to know some of you personally, which is one of the best things about doing this work. Hopefully, those of you who are new have discovered the depth and nature […]