Great Expectations
Talking about what your readers expect your story to be and how this can be used to create tension, add surprise, and entertain.
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Category: Inspiration
Three Personal Favorites: A Week of Reading
Reading three books a week means I have a towering ToBeRead Pile. Every writer will tell you they have authors[…]
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Writers Habits–Who Knew?
You might have heard Amy Lowell and George Sand both smoked cigars while writing. I thought it would be interesting[…]
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5 Things I Learned at the Pitch Conference (and one thing I forgot)
I spent the last four days at the New York Write-to-Pitch Conference, helping a group of 15 fabulous authors write[…]
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J. Ivanel Johnson: A Mystery 75 years in the Making
Please welcome our guest, J. Ivanel Johnson, who will share her wonderful story of a mystery that took 75 years[…]
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What Happens When Robots Dream For Us
What are we going to do when machines become better at all things creative than we are? When they dream for us?
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Creating a Character Bible
Let’s talk about character bibles. When I took a screenwriting class years ago at NYU, creating a character bible, lowercase[…]
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WINTER: A Writer’s Paradise
Not so long ago, I thought the perfect winter was one spent in a tropical paradise. After years of vacationing[…]
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Charles Dickens: Word Inventor
Happy Boxing Day! While Charles Dickens first used the term in The Pickwick Papers, the OED lists its first mention[…]
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Holiday Traditions (and a FREE GIFT!)
Tradition is the means by which the vitality of the past enriches the life of the present. T. S. Eliot
Traditions are important, especially during the holidays. However we may celebrate, family traditions give us a sense of belonging to something greater than ourselves.