Why do readers like genres? Readers like genres because they are familiar. Readers choose a genre because they’ve enjoyed other, similar books. They know more…
Author
Why do readers like genres? Readers like genres because they are familiar. Readers choose a genre because they’ve enjoyed other, similar books. They know more…
Themes? We don’t need no stinking themes. No, John Huston never used that line in one of his movies. But the iconic line about badges…
When we write fiction, we create fictional characters. Hitchcock famously said that the audience cares about the characters, while the plot is there to give…
A colleague of mine recently got a response from an editor praising his story for being “almost metatextual.” He wondered what that meant. I wondered, too. So,…
NOTE: I see that I omitted this, my second Writing.Com “For Writer’s ” column, on grammar from my blog here. So I’m belatedly republishing it…
Ray Bradbury once said, “I don’t tell anyone how to write and no one tells me.” Yet, when pressed, he produced eight “rules” for successful…
Nature doesn’t ask your permission; it doesn’t care about your wishes, or whether you like its laws or not. You’re obliged to accept it as…
All that we see or seem is but a dream.–Edgar Allen Poe I’ve been thinking about time, realism, and surrealism. When an author writes in…
Verbs are an author’s friend. They bring our characters to life. Verbs put them in motion, imbue them with traits, and describe their adventures. In…
In a prior life, one of my jobs was to draft academic policy. This was always fraught with peril, not over the policy but over…