The Secret Sauce of Fellow Writers Fellow writers provide a rich source of knowledge. You can use this knowledge to expand yours. From writing groups to indie author idea exchanges you can build your personal knowledge base on writing and publishing skills. New writers, especially, can fall into the trap of spending hundreds and sometimes…
How I set up and use Plottr to combine historical research with planning the storyline for a mystery.
Domestic Details Setting is important in any story. In historical novels, setting details give the reader a sense of what is around the characters. Without setting the characters are “floating in space” with nothing to ground them to surroundings. In the video of the mosaic discovery, the details of vibrancy and varied images are a…
L—d! said my mother, what is all this story about? The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Laurence Sterne When readers begin your story, they want to know certain elements, and very soon. Gone are the days when the scenic, lingering beginning of Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native will draw in a…
Mystery readers have expectations. Use these 10 elemental mystery tropes, to give them what they want while writing a great story.
In the first act of the mystery, you laid out all your detective’s skills one by one as new situations arose. In the middle, you frustrated all those skills by exposing your sleuth’s weaknesses. Now at the end, you can bring back those skills and strengths as your detective confronts the killer. Your detective has…
