The dictionary defines a scene as a place where an incident occurs, or a sequence of continuous action in a play movie opera or book. I would go farther and say a scene is the basic building block of a…
What is a chapter? The dictionary says it is the main division of a book. That’s true as far as it goes. In nonfiction, it holds a particular subtopic of the work. It’s a logical thing in that case. In…
All stories take place somewhere. The action needs some place to happen which is where the setting comes in. Your basic horror story always takes place in remote places because it wouldn’t work anywhere else. For example, The Shining takes…
A plot is a road map which is the simple way to explain it. No matter how convoluted a story-line may get with twists and turns like driving through a mountain range, each scene leads the reader to the denouement.…
If you’re like me, you have multiple books in progress at once. I have two novels I am revising. Another two which are almost ready to publish, and two in development. This is in addition to my daily journal where…
Last week, I talked about changing your writing habits. When I write, I sometimes come up with a character or a plot. Then I thought about changing it up. I decided to start by describing a setting. When I did…
Sometimes we fall into ruts when we are writing. It happens, for some people, it happens a lot. For a writer, we often find that if we fall into a rut the words dry up and we are blocked. If…
Sometimes when you are writing fiction, you run into scenes that just don’t work. My advice when that happens is to just write the scene and worry about it in the revision process. That is the best thing you can…
Another way to stimulate and grow your writing is to experiment. You can do that by searching the internet for writing prompts and exercises. Go to your favorite internet search engine and use the key words, writing exercise and pick…