Something I picked up from the Story Grid : Let's say you have a scene that is straightforward or obvious, totally expected for your genre. For example, if this was a love story or romantic comedy, let's imagine that your POV character is a girl who is at a wedding ...

Anyone who writes a lot must also spend a lot of time proofreading. But if you're anything like me, you probably find it hard to see the flaws in your own work. I've found two tricks that help me a lot. The first trick is sort of boring: just give ...

One major thing I've learned from a year of writing every day: writing is a mirror. What I mean by this, is your writing reveals a lot about you. Not to your readers, necessarily, though obviously you can open yourself up to your readers through your writing. Rather, writing reveals ...

There's a lot of tension in the writing world between "plotting" and "pantsing," aka " architects and gardeners ." I've found a technique that I think falls somewhere in the happy middle. I call it multi-pass writing, and I'll show you how it works. My favorite novel is Old Man's ...

My friend Paul and I have been working on a project called BetaBooks . It's an app to help writers connect with beta readers. The idea is pretty simple: post your writing, get feedback, repeat. I thought I might use this blog more for personal stuff than for work stuff, ...