Revising can be messy. As someone who thrives on order and checklists and clean documents, unmarked documents, I’ve never liked how messy the revision process can feel. You’ve got tracked changes turning your pages into Jackson Pollack painting, comments cluttering up the margins, unfinished subplots dangling about, and torn-apart scenes strewn through your manuscript like  … Read more

It’s no secret that one of the best ways to become a better fiction writer is to read lots of fiction. But I think it goes beyond that. I think, to become a better writer, you can’t just read a lot. You have to learn and practice how to read books as a writer. Not  … Read more

So, you’ve written a first draft of a novel. Now what?  If you’re like most writers, the thought of revising your first draft (especially if it’s a messy one) is so daunting, you’re afraid to even begin. Sadly, many authors finish a first draft and then tuck it in the proverbial drawer never to be  … Read more

I’m currently enrolled in a mindfulness course that introduced me to a wonderful passage from The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo. As the instructor read it aloud, I found myself not only thinking of my own experiences with the world, but of those of my characters. Of all characters, actually. This is the passage. Feel free to read  … Read more

The Karma Club Better You Than Me The Geography of Lost Things I Speak Boy Suns Will Rise Amelia Gray is Almost Okay I could go on and on but I’ll save you the time and just tell you what all of these books have in common. Apart from the fact that they were all  … Read more

Your novel’s first page is like the first 5 minutes of a blind date. Be honest, you can usually tell within the first five minutes whether or not there’s going to be a second date. Just like readers can tell by the end of the first page whether or not they’re going to stick around  … Read more

You finished a first draft. Phew! And now you may or may not be staring at a huge pile of messy pages that may or may not resemble a novel. My guess is you’re exhausted. You’re burnt out. You’re sick of this story and all of the characters and never want to look at them  … Read more

Dialogue can make or break a story. Strong dialogue can lift your story to new heights, while weak dialogue can turn a reader off. The key to writing strong dialogue is to think of it as another extension of your character development. Your dialogue is just another way you reveal your characters to the reader.  … Read more

  “Show, don’t tell” is one of those pieces of writing advice you hear over and over again without a lot of concrete guidance on what it is and how to implement it. Which is why, for this month’s writing tip, I thought I’d present a fun writing challenge that will not only help you understand what “show, don’t tell”  … Read more

  Writers are accused of a lot of unforgivable “crimes”: head-hopping, adverb overkill, predictable endings, cliched characters. Eek! I’m getting cold sweats just writing them all in one sentence!  But in the post, I want to talk about the common and far-too-often detrimental crime of “info-dumping” (also known as “too much exposition.”) Info-dumping is when  … Read more

Well, we made it! It’s 2021. 2020 is now officially “history.” And I don’t know about you but 2020 felt like a very messy first draft to me. Full of false starts, random plot twists that made no sense, a hard-to-follow narrative, and very poor pacing.  But although we can’t revise that mess, we can  … Read more

So, you’ve just finished writing your (possibly very messy) first draft! Which means it’s time to start the revising.  When I finish a first draft I immediately start to think about my revision plan and soon (after a much-needed break!) you should too!  Here are the 5 things I focus on for my first revision  … Read more

This tip will help you manage your list of revision tasks with efficiency (and sanity!) It’s a trick I picked up over several months of revising BETWEEN BURNING WORLDS (the sequel to my sci-fi space opera, SKY WITHOUT STARS). During the revision period of this book my co-author and I had a lot of super  … Read more

One of the hardest things a writer has to do is cut scenes from their novel that they really love. In this video, I share with you my tried and true quick test for deciding which darlings to keep and which ones to kill.  A lot of times in the drafting phase, we might get  … Read more

Imagine if someone handed you a 5,000-piece jigsaw puzzle and told you to put it together. “Fine,” you say, “what is it supposed to look like? Do you have a picture of the final product?”  “No,” comes the callous response.   Then you turn over all of the pieces to find that they’re completely blank. There’s  … Read more