dananicoleboyer

“If you tell the reader that Bull Beezley is a brutal-faced, loose-lipped bully, with snake’s blood in his veins, the reader’s reaction may be, ‘Oh, yeah!’ But if you show the reader Bull Beezley raking the bloodied flanks of his weary, sweat-encrusted pony, and flogging the tottering, red-eyed animal with a quirt, or have him […]

“You don’t write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid’s burnt socks lying in the road.” ― Richard Price As we discussed in the last post, so much of writing comes down to details. Which details, where, why now, how to work them in. So let’s talk about “The Warehouse Test”, and if

“My thoughts are spirographs;think intricate patterns of loops,think waves that never break.” ― Sabrina Benaim I know that all of us, at some point, have been sitting on our bed watching TV and suddenly thought, ‘OH NO, MY UNCLE REALLY WAS CREEPY BACK THEN’, and then moved on with our lives, only mildly wondering where those thoughts

“I write, “Jane came into the room and sat down on the blue couch,” read that, wince, cross out “came into the room” and “down” and “blue” (Why does she have to come into the room? Can someone sit UP on a couch? Why do we care if it’s blue?) and the sentence becomes “Jane

“The most important things to remember about backstory are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting. Stick to the parts that are, and don’t get carried away with the rest.”Stephen King   Imagine a reader in the middle of your book. They’re invested in the characters and the

“One should use common words to say uncommon things.”Arthur Schopenhauer Should the characters always say things? What if they’ve said things for pages and pages and you feel like you need to start making them exclaim, vocalize, announce, proclaim, imagine, or even ejaculate? There are always two pitfalls to fall into here. The first is

“If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”-Anton Chekhov Every writer knows they need details. They’re what flesh out the story and make the