What is suspense? Suspense is dramatic tension, the anticipation of things to come and questions to be answered. If you do it well, your reader will eagerly stay up well past his bedtime to read one more chapter. If you lose it, the reader will close the book and may never come back. You don’t […]
Updates & Round Two
As most of you know, I turned my manuscript in early (yay me!) with all of the edits from my editorial letter except one completed. I detailed what I had done in the email, explained why I’d chosen not to do the last small thing (I’m saving it for the next book), and sent it […]
Writing a Series
As most of you know, the last few weeks I’ve been researching series writing as a way to get my head around not only my next book (no. 2 in a series), but also the next however many I get to write with this world and characters. As a reader I hate the series that […]
Odyssey: What It’s Like
Here we are sitting on the end of the fourth week of Odyssey. I’m two-thirds done, and while part of me wants to go home today, another part wants to be here another two months, draining dry every bit of knowledge I can get from all of these great people. Odyssey is a crazy, intense […]
Advice to New Writers Part Two
This week, I follow up to last week’s advice to new writers. Whether you’ve been writing two decades or two seconds, it’s critical to keep working to get better. Here’s a few pointers I’ve learned along the way. Length. A story should be as long as it needs to be to tell the whole story – […]
Tension and Suspense
This week has had a lot of waiting. Waiting for the agent to get back to me to confirm receipt of my manuscript. Waiting for the Finalists call on Monday, on the off-chance I get it. And all the tension, the suspense, the wondering – all this waiting has got me thinking about how to […]
Raise the Stakes
The difference between a good story and a great one, the difference between a book you work through slowly and one you can’t put down, is largely the stakes. What do I mean by stakes? What your character or characters have on the line. Rather than a routine case, give your detective one that is […]
The Gun Range: or, Control
In my writer’s group there are two gun nuts: one, a large bald tattooed guy, set off my instincts immediately. But, that could be that he’s large and tattooed. I didn’t actually notice the gun until Saturday, when he brought it out to show the group. The second is a fifty-something woman with short, gunmetal […]
