I’m writing a novella and suddenly I feel the muse telling me the story’s disenchanted circumstances are begging me to add a monster. Why? I ask. Comes the answer: Because these scenes are a bit mysterious, but not dark enough—or they’re a little spooky, but not scary enough. This story needs some tension. Hmmm. She’s…
In junior high I learned how to type on a Smith-Corona manual typewriter. My mother, a steno clerk, said all women should learn how to type. So I practiced on hers. In my high school typing class we all used Royal manual typewriters. Looking back, I don’t know how that teacher could stand that racket…
Movie trailers and book trailers are designed to provide just enough imagery, animation, and sound to entice the viewer to watch the whole movie or read the book. But those who create movie trailers have a distinct advantage in that the imagery, animation, and sound they need for their trailer comes right from the movie…
As fiction writers know, readers prefer reading material that evokes a feeling. But it may escape our attention that this also applies to the nonfiction promotional materials we write like book covers, introductions, flyers, author websites and bios. This promo material doesn’t need to be dry or boring. Like we do with fiction, we can…
I have quite the corral of short stories with word counts ranging from 1,500 to 10,000. Some of my friends have suggested I expand a few of my stories to 70,000 or even 90,000 words. In other words, turn the stories into novels. At first this sounds like a great prospect because a novel has…