By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

The best stories are the ones that come alive in a reader's imagination. They pull the reader into the story world and sweep them away in the struggles and dreams of the characters. For us writers, envisioning our stories is the easy part, and the trick is getting what's in our heads onto the page.… Read the post

by Tiffany Yates Martin

There's a common fallacy of human thinking that you may be as guilty of as I sometimes am.

“He's a jackass….” “That woman is nothing but a gossip.” “I'm such a scatterbrain!”

In cognitive behavioral therapy this is called labeling and mislabeling, reducing a person to a single behavior, and it can become an automatic thought pattern.… Read the post

By Lori Freeland

Think about the way you craft a scene. Dialogue is pretty much a given. Some of us even use what our characters say as a backbone to begin filling in the blank page. Action is the same. We’ll often unconsciously describe what our characters are doing as they’re speaking.… Read the post

By Lisa Hall-Wilson

Ever had an editor or beta reader flag the moving or disembodied body parts in your fiction?

Eyes roaming/flying/darting…
Fingers flying…
Hand creeping…
Feet following…
Arms folding…
Heart pounding/racing…

Now, I get it. It feels like editors are just splitting hairs and camping out on semantics because the reader will understand what you meant.… Read the post

by Barbara Linn Probst

I worry, sometimes, that we’ve gotten in the habit of thinking of telling as the bad twin and showing as the good one—as if there are only two options and, of those, only one that the skillful writer would choose.… Read the post