Character Flaws

Which comes first, the character or the plot? For me, that’s an easy question to answer. There are so many characters roaming around inside my head that I would have to admit characters are my first love in fiction writing. And from my characters, my plot evolves. All I need to do is put my [...]

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Preying on the Weak (Verbs)

felt, looked, seemed…

They’re the most basic of verbs–the ones used to identify a state of being. We sometimes need them in our writing, and a story without them might well be florid and over-the-top. But an excess of weak verbs sucks the energy from a story. A good writer learns to stalk those weak verbs [...]

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What’s it All About?

Originally published in Fiction Fix Newsletter, November, 2001
Do you know the difference between a story and an anecdote? Unless you plan on selling little “slice of life” vignettes to magazines like Reader’s Digest and Woman’s Day for the rest of your writing career, you’d better. Merriam-Webster defines an anecdote as “a usually short narrative of [...]

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Say What? – Writing Great Dialog

The following was originally published in Fiction Fix Newsletter in January, 2002.
We talk every day. We hold conversations wherever we go–at work, out shopping, or at home with our families. You could say we’re all experts at casual chatter. Why, then, do many writers find dialog so difficult to write?I’ve always been a whiz at [...]

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