Category Archives: fiction

or me, story ideas come from everywhere…and nowhere. Sometimes, they just sort of pop into my head fully, or sometimes partially, formed. Probably that means my subconscious has ground up a lot of material gleaned from magazines, news items, TV, radio, other books, and people and events I encounter during the course of living life and then just produces some kind of literary hamburger. Continue reading →

Is first-person narration clumsy or too limiting for fiction? Only if the writer hasn’t worked at learning to use it properly. So, here are some of my thoughts on the perceived reasons for not using first person. Continue reading →

I’m sure every writer has his or her own criteria for deciding whether to write a story in first person or third person. I’ll tell you mine. Care to share yours? Continue reading →

In almost every story, we need to describe the physical setting and environment in which our characters live and work. But how much, and what kind of, detail to include? If you’re describing an actual building that exists beyond the … Continue reading →

In my last post, I discussed the need to tag the way your characters talk so the reader can easily distinguish one from the other…even if you delete the dialog attributions (he said, she asked, etc.) and the surrounding narrative. … Continue reading →