What do you think of when you hear the word cliffhanger? Bombs dropping? Car chases? A character literally dangling from a cliff while hungry sharks circle the water below? Not all cliffhangers are so dramatic. They can be big or small, external or internal, over-the-top or subtle. They can apply to thrillers, literary fiction, and…
Category: General Interest
How to Blog Tour Your Book Launch
Going into my second book launch, I find myself going through some of the same steps as I did before my first. One thing I did really big last year was a blog tour. Seems most authors have a blog and are happy to share their platform. They get to take a break from coming…
Deep POV Lesson 11 – MRUs
MRUs? Huh? An MRU is a Motivation Reaction Unit. It’s a term coined by the inestimable Dwight Swain, and it’s a magic key to keep your reader immersed deep in the story. It may not be DEEP POV, but it’s closely related. So, I’ll just give you a taste and send you off to Google…
On the Nature of Ritual
I think humans must have created ritual as soon as they started forming tribes, maybe before. We seem to do it almost without thinking. We tend to think of ritual as something involving religion. Catholic Mass. Pagans casting a circle. Celebrations of midwinter and new beginnings like birthdays and weddings. Even something as simple as…
Real Writer Life Top 10
1. Check out this fantastic piece in The New Yorker on the land-based writing habits (and more) of Herman Melville. Melville felt he had all of Moby Dick in his head and just needed to write it down. By the way, if you’re writing fiction, I hope you know you already belong to the same…