8 Ways to Write a 5-Star Chapter One

When you decide to go to a restaurant for a special dinner, you enjoy the anticipation. You’ve committed to spending sufficient time and money, and now you’ve arrived, and the place looks good and smells good. You smile and order an appetizer. When it comes, you enjoy...

Using Adjectives

From the Writer’s Digest Grammar Desk Reference by Gary Lutz and Diane Stevenson. Let’s examine the embellishments that either limit meaning or add further information (as well as direction, color, and detail to the basic grammatical unit). Modifiers and Other Parts...

The 7 Tools of Dialogue

My neighbor John loves to work on his hot rod. He’s an automotive whiz and tells me he can hear when something is not quite right with the engine. He doesn’t hesitate to pop the hood, grab his bag of tools and start to tinker. He’ll keep at it until the engine sounds...

Flash Fiction FAQs

What is flash fiction? Exact definitions can vary by specific market, but generally, complete stories of fewer than 1,500, 1,000, 500 or even 300 words can be classified as flash fiction. Other terms play companionably in the same sandbox, including short-short...

Career Patterns That Work

If your goal is to get published, that’s great. As an agent with thirty-plus years experience developing fiction careers, though, I can tell you that your thinking is too limited. Getting published is not the end of the road, but the beginning. Sizeable audiences...

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