Your main character—let’s call him Archie—has a problem. He’s trying to find something lost in the woods (a criminal’s hideout, perhaps, or a missing child, or a jungle-covered Mayan ruin). Suddenly, Archie knows what he needs: a drone! Now you, the author, have a problem. You’ve never flown a drone. What does it feel like…
I have recently been smacked across the head by writer’s block and have struggled getting my way through it. As a writer, I think that writer’s block is possibly the most crippling thing I could go through. It makes my love for writing seem like a chore when most days it is an escape. Writing,…
I’ll preface this brief essay by saying that others may have had different experiences with these two print-on-demand giants. The following summarizes my experience in working with each platform. Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is part of Amazon.com and that association alone may cause an independent author to hesitate. Yes, Amazon is the one-hundred-pound gorilla or…
David Mamet instructs, “Write dialogue in a rhythmic way. Human speech is rhythmic.”
Are you a monogamous writer? You get up every morning and all you can think about is the one novel, the one poem, the one essay you’re trying to write to the exclusion of all else. If a news item sparks a what if scenario, or a fascinating character comes to you in a dream,…