If you want to make readers care about your character, giving them a painful past isn’t enough. Meet Eleanor. When she was seven, her father abandoned the family. At 12, her mother died. At 16, her dog got run over by the school bus. Her fiancé left her at theContinue Reading
Your first three chapters may be the place to look if your book isn’t working. You’ve torn apart the middle. Maybe you’ve tried four or five different endings, and you’re not sure where the problem is. In my years of working with writers, I’ve discovered that often the problem isContinue Reading
What genre is my story? I’ve heard this question a lot from writers, so here’s some info that may help. Imagine fiction as being contained inside this huge hotel. On the first floor, you’ve got romance, mystery, and thriller. On the second, horror, epic fantasy, and coming of age, andContinue Reading
If you don’t know what happens next in your story, there may be a reason every idea you come up with feels wrong. I knew this girl who was dating a guy that I could tell was bad news. She couldn’t see it. She was completely bonkers over him. ButContinue Reading
The all is lost moment is that horrible point in your story where everything is lost. Your main character hits bottom, and it doesn’t look like there’s any hope left. The low point should be one of the most moving points in your story. But in some cases, you getContinue Reading
If you’re trying to figure out how to end a story, the problem may not be sitting at the end at all. Imagine a woman inherits her grandmother’s old hotel. She finds secret letters in the attic, runs into an old boyfriend, clashes with her sister, and starts to suspectContinue Reading
If you’re wondering why your story isn’t working, you may be closer to the answer than you think. Have you ever gotten to that horrible point with a book where you look at the whole thing and think, “I’ve spent years on this and it’s still not working.” Yeah, thatContinue Reading
What is character agency? It’s something I see missing in a lot of writers’ manuscripts. Imagine Titanic if Jack rescued Rose, protected her, made all the important decisions, and eventually deposited her safely into the lifeboat while going stoically to his death. We might call this version Distressed Luggage atContinue Reading
If story structure makes you picture a rigid outline that will squeeze the life out of your book, you may be resisting something very different from what your story actually needs. Have you ever watched two people build IKEA furniture? First, there’s Checklist Claire. She opens the instructions, lays outContinue Reading
If readers stop caring about your story even though you gave them a clever, twisty plot, the problem may be hiding underneath everything that’s happening. I’m sure you’ve picked up a novel with a clever, twisty plot and then set it down around chapter four and never came back toContinue Reading
Readers lose interest in your story when the danger on the page never presses on the one place your hero least wants touched. Picture the movie Jaws, but the shark bumps the boat once and everyone says, “Well, that was unsettling,” and then goes back to lunch. Or picture StarContinue Reading
If you want to become a better writer, you’ve probably heard this advice a hundred times: just write more. So, I followed that advice. I wrote and wrote, draft after draft, year after year. And that improvement? It wasn’t really happening. There’s a difference between becoming a better writer andContinue Reading