Writing a book outline is hard. Writing a book in general is hard. Plotting a compelling character arc and figuring out what happens next is a challenge for any writer, professional and newbie alike! Fortunately, I’m here to make it WAY easier for you. This blog post features my tried and true 15 steps to  … Read more

How many times have you stared endlessly at a single word on the page, thinking, It’s close, but it’s just not the RIGHT word. Then you mosey on over to Thesaurus.com, (or if you’re old school, break out an actual thesaurus), search for synonyms of the word only to find that NONE of them are the right word either?  … Read more

I’ve been using the Save the Cat! methodology to structure and plot my stories for more than ten years and  17 novels now. I even wrote a book on this very topic and created a Save the Cat! companion course. And yet every day, I feel like I’m still learning and expanding my knowledge about  … Read more

If you have a chapter that’s feeling a bit…well, meh. Try out this Writing Mastery hack! One of the best ways I’ve found to quickly power punch up a scene is to use a tactic I like to call… Hiding the Ball Basically it breaks down to this: Don’t give your reader EVERYTHING they need  … Read more

Stories are made inside our heads. Worlds are built, characters are born and die, universes are constructed. And yet, sometimes our silent brain space fails us. Sometimes, we get stuck and just can’t think our way out of a problem. Here’s a simple yet effective hack to help you deal with writer’s block and get  … Read more

Have you ever found yourself staring down a page or chapter in your revision, knowing you have to cut or rewrite major chunks of text, and thinking, “I DON’T WANNA DO IT!” Or maybe you say to yourself, something along the lines of, “But I love that passage! It’s some of my best work!” But we all  … Read more

More than fifteen novels under my belt and I’m STILL learning how to write and revise. Case in point: when working on the fourth and final draft of SKY WITHOUT STARS, the epic young adult space opera based on Les Mis that I co-wrote with Joanne Rendell, I was forced to solve a problem I’d never  … Read more