Tips for Authors

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This is a collection of ideas and suggestions gleaned from my own experience as a fiction writer. I hope these short posts help other authors think about and perhaps improve their own writing.

Please click any link below. (My most recent posts are listed first.)

• On Reading
• Creating Chapters
• On Writing Two Books at Once
• Beyond Characters and Plot
• What Readers Want
• Multiple Perspectives
• Sequencing Perceptions and Emotions
• Finding an Agent - Maybe
• Will ChatGPT replace me?
• How much do you tell the reader?
• Psychology - Injunctions and Attributions
• Think Ahead
• Potholes
• Method Writing
• Writer's Block Musings
• Plot and Character
• Sometimes Less is Better
• Pick a Hero
• Points of View
• Message or Not
• Repetition
• Ordinary Grace
• 39 Endings
• Using the Weather
• Foreshadowing
• Changing Genres
• To Murder or Not to Murder
• Acting Naturally
• On the Use and Misuse of Adverbs
• Heightening Tension
• How do you get rid of a bad guy?
• Incorporating the Senses
• Believability
• The Necessity of Plot
• Conventional Wisdom
• Changing Opening Scene
• Shaping Characters
• The First Line
• How to Write A Mystery