I had the honor of presenting a class for Jane Friedman that you might think of as the expanded, class-sized version of one of my most popular posts for her, The Alchemy of Emotion. In this class, I covered the ways that emotion is generated in long-form fiction at three very important, very distinct levels: At the level of the story … Read More
How to Get your Reader to Share in the Emotional Experience of your Protagonist
For so many of us, it was the way books made us feel when we were kids that made us want to write them when we grew up. The plots of those early, formative books…well, the fact is, we probably don’t remember a whole lot about them at this point. Regardless, we remember those feelings of wonder, of connection–moments when … Read More
Small Changes > Big Goals
If you’re like me, you have some big goals, and you’ve had them for years. One of mine has been to read 52 books in a year. Every year, it seems, I resolve to make this happen during the first week of the new year–and every year I fall short. Pictured here, you’ll see what my husband calls my Pile … Read More
What’s your cup of tea?
If you’ve been writing for a while, you’ve probably gotten to the point where you treat your writing like work, whether or not anyone is actually paying you for it–and that in many ways is the mark of a professional. But creative writing really is NOT like other forms of work, and at this time of year–which in so many … Read More
