Just like playing a sport or a musical instrument, writing is a craft that must be practiced. You may have heard that you have to write a million words before you get good. I don’t know who first said that; the principle has been attributed to Ray Bradbury, Jerry Pournelle, …
Category: Writing
Online Writing Classes October–December 2025
I’m excited for the classes we’ve lined up for the fourth quarter of the year, because they all work together to help you design great stories. Developing Sympathetic Characters — October 6, 2025, 7 p.m. • How to create characters that readers can care about Plot Pitfalls — November 18, …
Online Writing Classes August–September 2025
The Orange County Library System here in Central Florida holds writing classes over Zoom, so anyone anywhere may attend. The Library Card field on the registration form is optional. If you don’t have an OCLS library card, just leave it blank. Please be aware that the library does not record …
Save Your Manuscripts!
This is such basic advice I thought it would go without saying. But at least half a dozen times in less than a year, I’ve encountered writers who no longer had a word processor document containing the manuscript for their book. These are all folks who had their book published …
Online Writing Classes May–July 2025
The Orange County Library System here in Central Florida holds writing workshops over Zoom, so anyone anywhere may attend. The Library Card field on the registration form is optional. If you don’t have an OCLS library card, just leave it blank. Please be aware that the library does not record …
Coming Soon: Books and Courses
You all know that I’ve had several projects back-burnered for a while now, including the second and third books in the Prophet’s Chronicle series and my online editing course for writers, Edit Your Novel Like a Pro. After leaving these idling for ages while I went about the business of, …
When to Use Commas Between Adjectives
This question comes up often in my editing: should or shouldn’t there be commas between adjectives in a string? I hate to tell you this but … it depends. Yeah, I know, English is complicated. That’s why I’m here. I swear, we don’t make up these rules just to keep …
Create Fictional Languages Without ConLangs
Constructed Languages like Elvish and Klingon are a vital part of much speculative fiction. But you needn’t be a linguist like Tolkein or Okrand to incorporate distinct fictional languages into your storyworld. You can use what we know about real-world languages to give the impression your characters are speaking different …
How to Go Deeper into Characters’ Emotions
One of the most frequent comments editors make on new writers’ manuscripts is to go deeper into characters’ emotions. Readers come to narrative stories for an emotional experience. So authors, both of fiction and of narrative nonfiction, need to go beyond telling the reader how a character feels. The goal …
Tampa: How to Edit Your Novel Systematically
UPDATE: We had a great time at the Tampa workshop. If you were unable to make that event, I’ll be teaching the same workshop again in Orlando June 16. A Method for Revising Your Book Like a Pro Tampa: April 14, 2018, at 1901 S. Village Avenue, Tampa FL 33612 Writers know …