The secret to good fiction isn’t plot. It isn’t setting. It’s the characters. It’s characters we want; characters we love. Characters we fall in love with. Characters that break our hearts. A good, solid character can make the most trite, contrived story feel fresh and new. A good character can save a bad story. A bad story can’t save a good character. But how? That’s the question. It’s always the question. How? I’ve written much on creating compelling characters (and suspect

All things serve the story. Easy to say, hard to put into practice. As writers, we’re all in love with every word we grunt-and-push out of the glob of meat between our ears. We dote on them as though they were children, for that’s what they are. Writing is creative, and creativity is an act of birth. You’re bringing something into the world that wasn’t there before. Something that is made up of equal parts of yourself and the experiences you’ve suffered. Every word of dialogu

An adverb is a word that modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, noun phrase, clause, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering questions such as how?, in what way?, when?, where?, and to what extent?. Adverbs are evil. Adverbs should die. Adverbs are a rookie’s tool. Adverbs are linguistic Hitler. Okay, that last one might have gone too far. But you take my meaning, I hope. Adverbs are n

Sometimes you’ll hear people discussing a visual medium such as television, and the unintended effect of some visual clue or key. “That wasn’t what I meant at all,” the director might say. Or an actor. Or the cameraman. But in a static art such as painting or writing, you need to remember there are no accidents. You might not have considered (as I had not) that each brush stroke in a painting is intentional. That each detail has to be carefully added by the artist. There is

It was recently brought to my attention that, as a blogger, I’m pretty much a failure. At least, I’m a failure in that I didn’t make it clear, maybe, about who I am, what I’m doing, or even why. Also, I failed to explain what a ‘ProAm’ is, or why you all should even care. And that as a blogger, I kinda sorta sound a little… to put it delicately… like a gigantic egotist. All of which is a little hurtful. And all of which is NOT wrong. Not even a little. So. I’ve been doing th

What sounds like just another chemistry joke (and we all know how hilarious THEY are) is actually the clearest distillation (see what I did there? Yeah, the whole post is like that, sorry) of how I see myself as a writer. I’ll explain. Recently for my Creative Writing class I had to write a short story for the class to critique. We were given several weeks to do this, but I actually had an outline by the time class was done, and when I went home that night, I wrote in one lon

I’m convinced that no one likes a perfect hero. No one likes a shining beacon of trust, honesty, hope, light, righteousness, and perfection. It’s boring. No one likes a hero who doesn’t have to learn and grow. No one likes a hero who never failed. Now, the idea behind the hero is that someone has to win. In the end, the hero is triumphant. No question about it. But keep in mind, the hero isn’t always the good guy or good girl. The hero and the good or bad guy aren’t always th

I go to my coffee shop (no, it’s not StarSchmucks) for a dirty chai on ice. I walk in, I admire the place, I listen to the music I’ve likely never heard before. I leave a nice tip, because they do amazing dirty chai there (it’s black chai tea and a shot of espresso, btw. Good for what ails you, provided you don’t have a heart condition) and I leave. Occasionally, as it is a coffee shop, I see people pecking away on their laptops. This is fine. Sometimes it can be quite the mo

Not yours. That’s a different tip. No, this time it’s about your characters. So many writers, either in books, television, or movies, are guilty of not taking the time to make sure their characters have their own voices. Go listen to any random dozen conversations. See how those people each use different inflections, words, and sentence structure? THAT’S voice. It’s not just tone. It’s FLAVOR. Do this exercise to see how you fare: take a dozen pages you’ve written that contai

As a writer, I like to put my stories in places that will become sort of a third character. You don’t want stories that could take place in front of a white sheet that seems just as valid in Philadelphia, New York City, or Guam. WHERE you put your story is important. If you’re going to be specific, be really specific. Pick a place for a reason and write about it like you KNOW it. Especially if your characters are natives. Now, as a human being who wasn’t born dripping rich