In preparation for the 2020 RMFW anthology, I’m doing a series of blog posts on short story craft. While plot and character are the two most important elements of your story, setting comes in a close third. In my opinion, setting is the fastest way to elevate a good story to a great one. A…
Tag: emotion
Addictive Storytelling
The other day I downloaded a book from Amazon onto my Kindle and began to read. About 50 pages in, I suddenly got a vague sense of deja vu, and as I read further, I kept getting that feeling and it kept getting stronger. Finally, about halfway through I couldn’t escape the realization that I’d…
Rocky Mountain Writer #153
Natasha Watts & Anatomy of Emotion If you happened to set some resolutions about writing for 2019 and you want to dive right in, RMFW-U has got you covered with a brand new online course, Anatomy of Emotion, kicking off this coming Sunday, January 6. Your teacher is Natasha Watts and we’ve got her here…
DEEP POV Lesson 5 – Using Internalization on Purpose
DEEP POV uses internalization purposefully. As you’re studying DEEP POV, you may think there’s an awful lot of internalization. You may be right. And as writers, we need to make sure our internalization – our DEEP POV – is not all over the place. Every thought the POV character has in a scene should be…
Crafting Unforgettable Atmosphere
Recently, I’ve been in the mood for a certain type of book—books like Coraline by Neil Gaiman, The Night Gardener by Jonathan Auxier, and the Lockwood & Co. series by Jonathan Stroud (all of which I highly recommend). They’re all dark, spooky, and supernatural. In other words, they all have a certain atmosphere. Atmosphere is…