Writing Craft
Lose “Said” & Try Action Tags in Dialogue
Dialogue is one of the most fun parts of a story to write. We can really get in our characters heads while writing dialogue. It’s our opportunity to let our characters speak, to share who they are. We can also use dialogue to develop our characters not only through their words but also through their…
Read MoreWriting Dialogue: How to Develop (and Hear) your Characters’ Voices
I’ve been hard at work on my latest novel and am enjoying getting the characters developed and on the page. I always have a pretty good grasp on my characters by the time I start writing because I definitely fall into the category of “planner” when it comes to writing my novels. Never could I…
Read MoreExplode Moments with Details
One of the hardest parts of writing fiction is to figure out how much detail to put into a scene. Too much, and your reader gets bored and starts skimming until they get to the action-y parts. Too little, and your reader can’t adequately picture what’s going on. You gotta be Goldilocks and get it…
Read MoreHow to Create Your Own Writer’s Emotion Resource Guide
You’ve probably heard the advice to “write what you know,” and if this whole idea confused you, you’re not alone. If you can only write “what you know,” then how does John Green write so convincingly and beautifully about dying from cancer? He’s still alive and well, and I don’t think he’s had cancer. Or,…
Read MoreMy #1 Tip for Becoming a Better Writer + a Video!!
Have you ever had this experience: you had a great idea for a story, so you spent an afternoon or a week or two, getting it down on paper. Then, you read through it, but it didn’t seem to work so well, so you revised it. Maybe you asked your mom or good friend for…
Read MoreThe Beloved and Oft-Misused Semi-colon
I’m not sure why it is that teen writers love the semi-colon, but they do; however, despite their love for it, they often misuse the poor thing. I don’t think this is all their fault. For whatever reason, at least where I teach, students have a semi-colon “learning gap.” They seem to be either terrified of…
Read MoreShould you use contractions in your writing?
During the summer, I always spend some time working on what I’m going to be teaching during the coming school year. A few weeks ago, I read an article discussing contractions in academic writing, and how in school, the author had been taught not to ever use contractions in writing. Then, in the comments, quite…
Read MoreCommon Grammar Errors in Fiction: Switching Tenses
One of the most common grammar errors I see in stories that teens write is switching tenses, or slipping back and forth between past tense and present tense. I’ve read hundreds (if not thousands of teen stories), and though I’ve never tracked it, I’d say that well over half of the fiction pieces teens write…
Read MorePRACTICE vs. practice – What’s the Most Effective Way to Improve Your Writing?
What’s with the “all caps” vs. no caps in this post’s title? Well, there are different approaches to practicing a skill like writing. There’s PRACTICE, where we focus on improving specific skills. And then there’s the practice of writing, where we merely get the “black on the white,” or the ink on the page. When…
Read MoreSentence Structure Matters
Next to your individual word choice, your sentence structure is the basic building block of your voice. Your sentences tell your story, either simply or poetically. They pull your reader in and carry them along. It is possible to write a best-selling novel using basic sentence structure: simple, compound, and with a few more complex…
Read More