Tiffany Yates Martin   The Efficient Author’s Cheat Sheet for Creating Suspense and Tension:Questions that Keep Readers Hooked Even if you aren’t a fan of the Marvel universe (and I have to confess that I am), you may have heard some of the uproar over the latest Avengers movie. Without laying down any spoilers, the […]

Tiffany Yates Martin How to Dig Deeper for the Buried Treasure in Your Story There is a scene in the movie Crazy, Stupid, Love that wrings my heart out every time I see it. Childhood sweethearts and longtime spouses, played by Steve Carrell and Julianne Moore, are separated after the wife’s infidelity. Carrell’s character can’t stop sneaking […]

Tiffany Yates Martin (In the past two months, I've shared my revision process with you here at Writers in the Storm as I've moved through the suggestions Tiffany has made. Today, she shares what she does in her job working with authors, like me, as a professional editor. -Fae) My husband doesn’t want me to be on HGTV. […]

First, I am not crazy. Well, not that way. I've finished four manuscripts; all have finaled or won in several contests. I've sent out a dozen queries, maybe more, thanks to Laura Drake. The two books I thought were most salable, have been requested and sent to a handful of agents and editors in New York. […]

 Tiffany Yates Martin Writers love their brains: We exploit our highly evolved prefrontal cortex to infuse our prose with dazzling verbiage and transport our reader to the world of our creation. Yet for creating tension—one of the most important elements of compelling fiction—nothing beats the lowly amygdala: the primordial lizard brain that handles the most […]