By Janice Hardy (@Janice_Hardy)

Get your protagonist up off the couch and into the story.

When I was six, I wrote a series called Dog City that followed the adventures of a team of dog archaeologists as they searched for a lost city of, you guessed it, dogs.… Read the post

By Janice Hardy (@Janice_Hardy)

I’ve always been drawn to writing science fiction and fantasy, which means that I’ve written a lot of first drafts based on “cool ideas” but no real conflict. Sure, I had a sense of what the problems were, and maybe even a few key scenes unfolding in my mind, but the books were about the idea, not characters with specific problems. … Read the post

By Janice Hardy
@Janice_Hardy

A new year often starts by declaring your goals and dreams, but a frightful number of writers don’t achieve those goals—or those dreams.

And I was one of them for a very long time.

I’d start every January with high hopes and ambitious plans about what I was going to accomplish that year.… Read the post

By Janice Hardy,
@Janice_Hardy

It happens to the best of us.

We’re writing along, happy as can be, and then WHAM! Our story stalls. We write a scene, scrap it, write it again, move pieces around, cut and paste the same paragraph in nine different spots, but nothing works.… Read the post

Janice Hardy

Readers may not judge a book by its cover, but they will judge it by its opening scene.

An opening scene has but one job—to establish the story and convince readers to read the next scene. That’s a lot to ask of a single scene, but it’s not as difficult as it sounds.… Read the post