I am a big believer in writers attending conferences. Next to belonging to a great critique group, it’s the best thing you can do for your writing career. You’ll build relationships with writers and others in the business that will help you pursue your career. You’ll take classes to improve …
Use similes and metaphors to aid description
Several years ago, Margie Lawson taught a workshop put on by the Florida Writers Foundation in advance of the annual Florida Writers Association Conference. Margie teaches about the need to delve deep into character emotion to reach readers. When, at the end of the course, she asked what most struck …
Give richer descriptions of important things
One key to having an appropriate amount of description in your story is proportion. The amount of time you spend describing an object should be relative to its story purpose. ☐ Settings and objects are described in proportion to their importance. It’s easy to spend lots of time describing the …
Use description to engage the reader
Description is a necessary element of fiction, but people differ greatly on how much is enough and how much is too much. When you show your draft to critique partners and beta readers, you may get wildly different evaluations about how you’re doing on this point. I recently finished the …
Em Dashes in Dialogue
Last time, we looked at using ellipses in your dialogue. Up next: em dashes. ☐ Punctuation such as em dashes and ellipses are used correctly. The em dash—it looks like this—is used to indicate a break of thought or speech. It can be used parenthetically, as in the previous sentence, …
Using Ellipses in Dialogue
Punctuation is hard to master in everyday writing. Fiction adds a layer of complexity because of the different way dialogue is punctuated. As if commas weren’t hard enough to wrangle on their own, dialogue puts a special twist on a couple of marks that don’t otherwise see a lot of …
Use speech and action to convey emotion
Many new writers—and, frankly—some experienced writers—take a short cut in first draft writing by using labels to convey emotion. Do what you must to get through the first draft, but our editing pass is the time to root those things out and replace them with something meaningful. ☐ Emotional states …
Use dialogue tags wisely
Dialogue tags seem simple, but in practice they are a complex element that many new writers fail to appreciate. One characteristic that distinguishes great writing from good writing is the efficient and elegant use of dialogue tags. ☐ Dialogue tags convey meaningful information, such as action beats. One of the …
Use dialogue to move story forward
Back in my college days, I had the great opportunity to take a writing course from TV comedy writer Danny Simon. He taught us a lot in that class, and I’ve probably forgotten most of it, but I kept my notes, so I can always go back and check. One …
Characters speak like real people
New writers’ manuscripts are often marked by unrealistic dialogue. Many things can go wrong in characters’ speech, but this is one of the biggest. If the characters’ conversations sound fake, readers will drop out quickly. ☐ Conversations are natural and realistic. When I say natural, I refer partly to the …