When you write a novel, you create a timeline that begins on the first page and ends on the last. It's like laying down a road from Point A to Point Z that your reader can travel as you guide her on her journey. Along the way, things will happen, events that take...
Those stories couldn't have taken place anywhere else. Consider Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth, with its ambitious depiction of medieval England, James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia and L.A. Confidential and Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins mysteries (Los Angeles in...
In nearly all stories, regardless of genre—suspense, romance, literary, mainstream, science fiction, whatever—the essential conflict is introduced, dealt with, and resolved by means of a series of events conveyed through action, dialogue, and narrative. These events...
When I'm writing fiction, I often feel as if there are two co-authors in my head, working together to craft the sentences and paragraphs and pages that make up my story. Co-author #1, the Content Mistress, keeps her eye on the big picture. She's in charge of making...
“When you write, try to leave out all the parts the readers skip.” This very popular quote by Elmore Leonard isn’t just an amusing quip; it sums up the essence of good writing. Fiction is about entertainment, and stories that are sluggish, repetitive, or pedantic...
Did you ever read a book or a manuscript and feel a lack of involvement in it, as if a story is being told, but it isn't really happening, at least not to you? These are the books we end up putting down because they simply don't grip us. We can't lose ourselves in...
There's a theory entertained by some aspiring authors that you can send an unpolished novel to a publisher, and if there's the germ of a really great story in it, they'll buff up the bad writing, fix the grammar and usage errors, and essentially teach you how to...
During a writing workshop I took many years ago, the instructor launched into an earnest lecture on suspense and the vital role it plays in fiction. Like my fellow students, I was surprised by her intensity on the subject. If she'd been a mystery author, I would have...
All stories—all of them—are supported by some sort of narrative framework, however minimal or experimental. Even if you're a seat-of-the-pants writer who feels creatively hamstrung by the very idea of "Plot," please know that the rambling, expressionist coming-of-age...
Back in the early nineties, when I was shopping around my first book manuscript, one of my strategies for landing a contract—and the one that eventually did the trick—was to attend conferences hosted by Romance Writers of America chapters, during which I always signed...