PLOT is not ACTION. It can be easy to confuse the two. I sure have. I’ve heard great and award-winning authors summarize their view of plot as, “The stuff that happens.” Well, yes… a successful plot is the stuff that Read more
“When do you stop revising?” A friend asked me recently. “You can stop?” was my initial response, but the truth is more nuanced than that. (And besides, that answer was Not Helpful.) At some point in my writing career – Read more
So once upon a time I thought I’d write about story shapes – the idea that stories can be thought of in these vague archetypical forms, and that will help with writing them. I jumped right in with “The Caper” Read more
When I was still unpublished, I spent a lot of time worrying about My First Line and Hooking The Reader. If my very first line didn’t grab the reader by the throat and make them incapable of doing anything other Read more
When I was seven years old, I received incontrovertible proof that fairies were real. It happened on a summer’s day. Midsummer? Maybe. I woke in the bed I shared with my twin sister to find a silver ring on my Read more
“Men have no standards,” my friend joked recently. His wife said, “Now, what does that say about me, sweetie? If you have no standards…” it had the air of an oft-repeated conversation and I was irritated by the complacent amusement Read more
My poetry professor gave out an assignment to write five interconnected, longer poems. The goal was that by the end of his course we would all write book-length poems. I was mad in love with the old victorian mansions of Read more