Mystery Monday
Mystery Monday: Ask Me Anything Join me on Facebook Live on Mondays for Ask Me Anything chats about writing and reading mysteries. Great place for mystery lovers to get together. http://bit.ly/MysteryMondayAMA
Notes on Passion Driven Writing
The Word and Syntax Writer Wake Up Nothing is perfect, especially when it comes to writing. You can always tweak for better wording. The time to tweak most is before publishing. Yes, it seems self-evident but searching for the mot juste that isn’t quite yet or refining the language of a sentence are part of…
Use Character Depth to Build Reversals
When Friends Become Enemies and Enemies Become Friends Challenging your protagonist with obstacles adds intrigue and engagement for readers. Reversals, where what appears to be one thing turns into something else are great obstacles to throw at your protagonist. Just when the reader thinks they know, a reversal pivots the story. The protagonist experiences an…
Give Your Characters the Wrong Ideas
Fallacies in Logic and Rhetoric Errors in logic and rhetoric are a great basis for characters misrepresenting themselves, obfuscating the truth, and creating dialogue based on false information. Especially in mysteries where the protagonist uncovers the truth using fallacies by placing them in the mouths of your characters will set your protagonist down false paths….
Politics, History, and Story
Politics and People: Story Conflict Root Character and conflict are at the heart of story. These story elements are as important in historical fiction as they are in any other genre.Characters are modeled on human beings. Because human nature is a given, as an author you have a wide spectrum of character traits to play…
Roman New Year Games at the Circus Maximus
New Year Roman Games: No Lanes. No Rules STEPPING BACK IN HISTORY TO ANCIENT ROME WITH AUTHOR ZARA ALTAIR Zara Altair writes traditional mysteries set in the time of Ostrogoth Rule in Italy in The Argolicus Mysteries. Learn more about her and her books at her website. The New Year: A Time for Games In Ancient…
Stuck in Your Story? It’s not Writer’s Block
What can seem like writer’s block can be a story structure problem. Learn how to get going again.
so you want to be a writer?
so you want to be a writer? Charles Bukowski so you want to be a writer? Charles Bukowski, 1920 - 1994 if it doesn’t come bursting out of youin spite of everything,don’t do it.unless it comes unasked out of yourheart and your mind and your mouthand your gut,don’t do it.if you have to sit for hoursstaring at your…
Protagonist Deep Dive
Image source: Wikimedia How Does Your Protagonist Stack Up? You know your protagonist. Presenting your favorite character to the reading public and differentiating him or her to readers is challenging. You want your readers to like your protagonist as much as you do.I decided to do a little experiment. I chose some relevant or similar…
When A Review Helps Fine Tune A Story
How A Review Can Change Your Novel Details Careful reading of reviews can give a novelist clues about fine-tuning the novel and how to improve future stories. Thoughtful reviews can even trigger action to change. I work hard to make my historical information as accurate as possible, down to making sure the Latin words are…