Talking Dogs and Good Storytelling What Makes Good Storytelling No matter the media, good storytelling requires good material. It doesn’t matter if it’s a book, a movie, or a joke—the material has to be good. But even good material isn’t enough. Any comedian can tell you horror tales of jokes that fell flat or audiences […]
Book Recommendation Since many of you are mystery, suspense, and crime readers, I thought I’d share a new author I found that I think is fantastic. I’m always looking for new authors and not much is more exciting than finding a fresh new voice. Also, just so that you’ll know, when I do reviews, I […]
What is an Invisible Character? There are two kinds of invisible characters: those you create intentionally, and those you create by mistake. If you use beta readers, you’ll spot the mistakes quickly. They’ll be the characters that your readers don’t remember the names of. Or what they looked like, or what role they played in […]
What Do Your Characters Look Like? Many writers don’t take advantage of the most powerful tool in their arsenal—imagination. Whenever you get the urge to tell us how beautiful your characters are, or how perfect their nose is, or their body, or how enchanting the eyes are, down to the perfect shade of blue…stop! Don’t […]
Is Storytelling Genetic? What makes a good story? How come some books you can’t put down, have to turn the page, start a new chapter, and others…might be good, but if you go to bed late and are tired, the book waits for the next day. How about movies. Some movies you can leave running […]
The Secret to a Good Book Here’s the scenario—you finished your manuscript; your favorite friends read it; you ran it through two, maybe three, rounds of self editing; and now it’s ready. Whoa! Ready for what? Before you do anything with that manuscript, you better run it through a few more steps. You can’t give […]
My wife was reading a book the other night and the female lead was having a difficult time with her relationship. At one point the character said to her friend, “Nothing’s left. It’s all downhill from here.” Confused, my wife came to me and asked about the saying. “I thought ‘it’s all downhill from here’ […]
Thumbs Up I was reading a book the other night, and when I finished I went to write a review for it. I wondered, does this get a “thumbs up” or a “thumbs down?” Since it was a damn good book I gave it a thumbs up. But did I do right? Whenever I see […]
Your Characters Don’t Have To Be Pretty I was reading a mystery book the other night and a few pages into it, one of the main characters was introduced. The author did a fantastic job of describing how beautiful she was. I was in awe of this author’s talents. I could picture everything about her […]
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