Angela Ackerman shares a tool for taking your story's cast of characters to the next level. Building twice the character in half the time? Yes, please!

by Becca Puglisi I’ve been thinking a lot about dialogue lately, because when it’s done poorly, it pulls me right out of the story. There are a lot of issues that contribute to weak dialogue: incorrect mechanics, stilted speech, characters calling each other repeatedly by name (Hi, Bob. Hey, Mary. Could you help me with […]

Becca Puglisi Dialogue—good dialogue—is tricky. Mechanics can be learned; the rules are readily available and are hammered into us by teachers, editors, critique partners, and countless Facebook memes. The hard part of writing good dialogue is nailing the back-and-forth, the natural ebb and flow that turns dialogue into convincing conversation. This is the part that […]

Becca Puglisi As authors, we all know the importance of engaging our audience within a book’s first few pages. It’s called grabbing the reader: captivating them in a way that makes them want to stick with the story to its end. Michael Hauge prefers the term seducing: “Everybody likes to be seduced; it’s a gradual, […]