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Bring characters to life with specific details–Carrie Underwood style
Want to bring your characters to life, to make them live and breathe on the page? Use concrete, specific details. One of the most common issues I see when I critique other people’s writing (and when I look at my own early drafts) is too many generalities. Don’t tell me your character wore jeans and a t-shirt. Tell me he wore faded 501s, two sizes too small, and a Van Halen t-shirt with the sleeves ripped off. Or tell me he wore Wranglers with the outline of a Skoal can etched into the back pocket. (And I just told you I went to high school in a rural-ish town in…
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Desert View Watchtower, Grand Canyon National Park
If you’ve hung around on this blog for very long, you’ve probably figured out that I love photo challenges (see just about any of my photo posts for evidence). Well, I just found a new one, the Amazing Stonework challenge over on the For the Love of blog. Anita’s goal is, “to highlight the artwork created by builders of long ago.” I’m fascinated by old stone buildings, from millennium-old pueblos and cliff dwellings to the midcentury brick homes in my Tucson neighborhood, so I’m excited to participate in this challenge. I’m also excited to use this challenge as an opportunity to share photos from places that relate in some way…
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#SoCS: Rolling with life’s ups and downs
This post is part of the Stream of Consciousness Saturday blog hop. Linda Hill posts a prompt every Friday; today’s prompt is “up/down.” I’ve been thinking about life’s ups and downs a lot lately, maybe because the last couple of years have been up-and-downy for me, even more than normal. Of course there’s the Microbe that Must not be Named, but even setting that aside, I feel like my mood and energy as well as life events have fluctuated quite a lot. I’ve always prided myself on being resilient, on being able to roll with life’s punches, but lately I’ve been feeling life’s bumps a little more. It’s been an…
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#SoCS: In which your intrepid blogger whines about the Arizona heat
This post is part of the Stream of Consciousness Saturday blog hop. Linda Hill posts a prompt every Friday; this week’s prompt is, “hat/het/hit/hot/hut.” Me, about an hour ago: I haven’t participated in SoCS for awhile. I’m tired and sleep-deprived, and I really don’t feel like revising my novel, so I’ll hop over to Linda Hill’s blog and see what today’s prompt is. Maybe it’ll be something I can relate to. It includes the word, “hot.” There’s a massive heat wave in the Western U.S. And I live in Arizona. Yeah, I can relate. We’re on about day 6 of temperatures over 110. It was 113 yesterday here in Tucson,…
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PitMad and an Update from the Query Trenches (Otherwise Known as Rejection Report #1)
While working my way through the June posts in the IWSG Blog Hop, I found a wonderful post on Emma Louise Gill’s blog, in which she summarizes her querying experiences so far. I just started querying last month, and I found her post both encouraging and informative. Oh, and inspirational, in that it inspired me to post my own (much shorter and less eventful) query update here. I’ll try to make it a monthly tradition, so you can share my pain vicariously. I’m currently querying Vanishing, Inc., a time travel romance in which Alex Collins flees to a tiny town in the Arizona mountains to escape an abuser. There she…
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Prepping for #PitMad (#IWSG)
Thursday I’ll be pitching my time travel romance, Vanishing, Inc., in #PitMad. What, you ask, is PitMad? It’s a pitch party on Twitter, in which unagented authors like yours truly try to distill their magnum opuses into a 280-character tweet in the hope of attracting an agent’s attention. And I thought writing a query letter was hard. Fortunately, there’s lots of great advice out there for PitMad virgins like me. I’ll share the most useful tips I found, but first: This post is part of the Insecure Writers Support Group monthly blog hop. On the first Wednesday of each month, I and my fellow insecure writers post something related to…
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They liked it? They really, actually liked it? (#IWSG)
If you’ve hung out on my blog much, you know that I participate in the monthly IWSG (Insecure Writers Support Group) blog hop. On the first Wednesday of each month, I and my fellow insecure writers post something related to writing, and other insecure writers visit and maybe even leave a comment. That tiny bit of validation helps sooth our insecurities. The helpful hosts of the IWSG even give us an optional question to respond to, just in case our insecurity is seasoned with writer’s block. This month’s question is: Have any of your readers ever responded to your writing in a way that you didn’t expect? If so, did…
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Cool stuff I’ve read, fiction writing edition: Dana Stabenow on writing crime fiction, Janice Hardy on stage directions, and a handy scene checklist from Fiction Notes
Today I’m kicking off what I hope will become a regular feature around these parts: cool stuff I’ve read. Today’s edition covers blog posts about the craft of writing, but I hope to share non-writing things too: stories, podcasts, weird news, interesting science–whatever crosses my desk that would in normal times make me get out of my office chair, barge into your workspace unannounced, and say, “You have to read this.” So what cool stuff have I read lately? Glad you asked. 7 Tips for Writing Crime Fiction – Dana Stabenow Dana Stabenow, famous for her crime novels set in Alaska, gives us fellow crime writers a useful and occasionally…
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Writing as risky business–or how to offend everyone (#IWSG)
I participate in the monthly IWSG (Insecure Writers Support Group) blog hop. This month’s optional question is: Are you a risk-taker when writing? Do you try something radically different in style/POV/etc. or add controversial topics to your work? When people make lists of the riskiest professions, those lists include jobs like mining and commercial fishing, not writing. But writing carries its own, albeit less deadly and/or smelly, risks. The most common one is poverty, because writing pays crap, but I’m not going to talk about that today. My day job keeps me in Pop Tarts and Extra Toasty Cheez-Its, so I shouldn’t complain. The IWSG question of the month mentions…
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Fiction writers, make your action beats multitask
“This deserted warehouse sure is creepy,” Shaggy said. “Yeah, it is. Now let’s split up and see if we can find the Ghostly Fisherman,” Fred said. “Ruh roh,” Scooby said. [several adventures later, usually involving Shaggy and Scooby running for their lives] “Let’s see who’s been scaring all the tourists away from Devil’s Cove,” Fred said. He yanked the mask off the Ghostly Fisherman. “It’s Barney Rumblefish, the real estate mogul,” Fred said. “I was trying to scare everyone away, so I could buy out old man Farnsworth for cheap and build a new luxury hotel in Devil’s Cove,” Rumblefish said. “And I would have gotten away with it if…
Janet Alcorn
Suspense | Horror | Romance
