What does “show, don’t tell” really mean, anyway? Last week Chuck Sambuchino posted my article “7 Things I’ve Learned So…
I want to pass along an exercise I led earlier this month at a high school Writers Fest. I asked…
I learn a ton when I interview my characters. Over the years, I’ve compiled a set of questions for them,…
This past February while writing a new scene, a character showed up, whispered to my protagonist, “We have safe houses…
How and where is it best to enter into a particular story—which moment, which sounds and which smells should a…
Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club begins like this: Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler’s pushing…
At the mid-Atlantic SCBWI conference last month, keynoter Han Nolan said, “When a story scares me so much that I…
In mid-March, as I staffed the James River Writers (JRW) table at the Virginia Festival of the Book in Charlottesville,…