Writing is a process of discovery. Often, what the novitiate discovers, is how nearly impossible it is to tell a good story, though you burn with the fire of raw experience in need of a story. The master practitioner of the craft risks substituting technique for an intuitive engagement with the subject. How to get […]

Let’s say you’re in the developmental stages of writing a novel. Or you’ve shown a draft to readers and the feedback is some version of: there’s not enough happening, I just don’t know why I should bother to read on. Regardless of what kind of novel you’re writing, if it has plot, there is basically […]

A little writing exercise I like to do when my characters aren’t livening up: “What would s/he notice?” I’ll put a prompt with that based on a risk-laden situation. In John  Greene‘s YA novel, Turtles All The Way Down, a risk-laden situation that occurs early in the story involves his two main characters. Daisy and […]

Source: How To Be Convincing: It’s All In The Details

Every story seeks, according to Emerson: the “invisible and imponderable.”  To get at the emotional truths that hide in shadows and lie buried under surfaces, to get at those hidden truths, adds Anthony Doerr (author of All The Light We Cannot See), writing in Four Seasons in Rome, “The reader first and foremost must be […]