Creating Characters: 4 Simple Exercises

Tips and techniques for creating characters with emotion and viewpoint in this excerpt from “Write Great Fiction: Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint” by Nancy Kress. 1. WRITE MINI BIOS FOR YOUR DREAM CAST Make a list of characters you either might want to...

A Checklist for Developing Your Hero and Heroine

Answer the following questions for each of your main characters. It’s usually most productive to take one character at a time, but if you run into difficulty answering the questions about one, try switching over to the other for a while. As you answer the questions,...

10 Rules for Writing Opinion Pieces

by Susan Shapiro Opinionated editorial essays are often the most fun, fast and furious pieces to get into print — especially for nonfamous writers with strong opinions and day jobs in other fields. That’s because editors of newspapers and online magazines like Slate,...

Writing Advice from Stephen King Jerry Jenkins

HOW DID THE TWO OF YOU MEET? JENKINS: We happened to have the same audio reader, a brilliant voice actor named Frank Muller. In November 2001 Frank was in a horrible motorcycle accident that left him brain-damaged, incapacitated and barely able to speak. One of...