by Lori Freeland

Avoid unlikeable main characters. Show don’t tell. Lock your character into character. Tell your story forward. Pass on passive verbs. Say bye-bye to backstory. Nix the omniscient narrator and dodge the dreaded head hop. Always remember adjectives are lazy, exclamation points are evil, and adverbs are from the devil.… Read the post

Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Readers experience your novel through the eyes of your narrator. Sometimes this narrative filter is invisible and readers don’t perceive any distance between them and the point-of-view character, such as with a first-person point of view. Other times the filters are obvious and readers feel the space between them and the characters, such as with an omniscient narrator.… Read the post

Margie Lawson

Most writers know Show Don’t Tell, but sometimes they think they’re showing when they are telling.

Here’s my oh-so-easy check.

Read the sentence that you think SHOWS the reader something.

Ask yourself ---- What’s the Visual?

You may be surprised that the sentence doesn’t provide a visual.… Read the post

by Shannon Donnelly

There are a lot of crimes a writer can commit—the torture of sentences, the mangling of meaning, the wrecking of words through using the wrong one at the wrong time. However, the greatest of these is the crime of lack—to forget to put in the emotion.… Read the post

Today Fae Rowen wraps up her series on attachment models and the science of falling in love. If you missed Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, or Part 4 where she describes the early childhood adaptations and the "repairs" for each of the four attachments styles, you can link to any one by clicking on the part you missed.… Read the post