This month, I had the pleasure of attending Lisa Cron’s virtual launch for Story or Die: How to Use Brain Science to Engage, Persuade, and Change Minds in Business and in Life, and wow, what a surreal experience it was to hear her glowing praise for me as her book coach—I, who started off as a total fan girl of … Read More
The One Thing Your Novel Absolutely Must Do
Start in the middle. Get all the important characters on the page in the first chapter. Reveal what the protagonist wants. Reveal the protagonist’s vulnerabilities. Establish what’s at stake. There are a whole lot of books on the craft of fiction out there, and it can feel like every one of them makes the case for one thing your book must do … Read More
No Conflict But in Scenes
The poet William Carlos Williams said, “No ideas but in things.” As a fiction writer and book coach, I have my own corollary: “No conflicts but in scenes.”
Landing the Quantum Leap
Every year I teach a class aimed at helping writers polish the opening pages of their novel or short story, in order to give them the best possible chances of getting those stories published. And every year, as I read through those opening pages, I’m struck by the degree to which writers, even very good ones, often fail to account … Read More
