Where your scene takes place is, in many ways, as important as the scene itself. It sets the mood, the tone. The environment your characters are in can contrast sharply with what’s going on or add to the emotion. Perhaps Penny’s boyfriend is breaking her heart at the carnival, contrasting with the gaiety all...
Remember in kindergarten when you got to bring an item for show and tell? You got to show your possession and tell your classmates all about it. Well, in writing, it’s a bit different. When we show something to the reader, we’re trusting them to fill in some of the blanks. We’re letting them...
Timing is everything. When you’re planning the publication date of your book, make sure you leave enough time for revision, editing, proofing, cover design, and formatting. None of these things should be rushed. In fact, it’s better to have scheduled extra time and be ready ahead of your date than to find yourself crunched...
When we block creativity… where does it go?
As +R. Harlan Smith wrote…
An interesting assortment of views on writing, writer’s block, the rules of writing, and dialog tags.
We had a lively and fun conversation with writer, teacher and soon to be film director +Mark David Gerson.
We touched on creativity, the muses, the energy blocks that stops the flow of writing and the consent to allow us to be that which we truly should be… CREATIVE!
My band of wonderful minds had fantastic words to add to all of this… many thanks to Harlan, +Sergey Andrianov, +David Amerland and +Simon Grew.
John and Toni Rakestraw are the owners of Rakestraw Book Design. Toni is the editor; she keeps all those words in line. John is the voice of the company. He can often be found hosting Google+ Hangouts on writing and issues writers face online. Archives for his shows can be found on YouTube.
I often come across repetitive summarizing in stories as I edit. It’s okay to do this from time to time in a book, especially if the plot is complex, there’s a mystery going on, or there are multiple characters the reader has to follow. A character summary is best done in the form of...
Both of these are important to writing, but regrettably the way we are taught writing focuses mostly on grammar or the content. We are overlooking the more interesting aspect of writing, the one I love best, composition. This is the process of being able to put an idea together, in writing, in such a...
