jamesCglass

In Interrogation Techniques part one, I discussed verbal cues and how to use them to detect lies from a perpetrator. Although verbal cues can lead to a confession, many suspects are able to lie as easy as breathing. Through conscious thought and repetition, these types of suspects can often get away with lies and deception, […]

Interrogations can be difficult to write. Too many writers get this wrong. This is usually due to the fact many people have only seen interrogations performed on television or in movies. I will admit television shows and movies provide great action scenes, but many examples used by Hollywood would get a detective fired or even […]

March as you know is named after Mars, the Roman god of war. Why? Because a lot of military campaigns began in the spring. Soldiers march. Right? Or did I make that up? Sounds good to me. Also, Mars the planet is named after Mars the god. Why? Because the planet looks red – it’s […]

One of the most difficult concepts for aspiring authors occurs when you bounce around from one character’s perspective to another, revealing the inner thoughts and feelings of multiple characters, without a proper scene break or clear signal. When you ping-pong back and forth between different characters’ viewpoints this is called head-hopping. Here’s a simple example. […]

Writers are notorious for their love of words. Because of this, we have a hard time targeting certain words as enemies. If you don’t take the time to dig deep in your manuscript, searching for enemy words, you risk weakening your story. This robs the reader of your full potential and they may decide to […]

What Does “Show, Don’t Tell” Mean? Good writing tends to draw an image in the reader’s mind instead of just telling the reader what to think or believe. Here’s a sentence that tells: Mr. Jeffries was a fat, ungrateful old man. That gets the information across, but it’s boring. Most writers who tell tend to […]

Writing constructively sounds simple enough, but the truth is, writing is tough. If the craft were easy, everyone would be doing it. This isn’t to say bad storytelling doesn’t exist because we’ve all come across terribly written stories. As an author, it’s good to understand when to write and when to wait. Let me be […]

For those of you who enjoyed Stone Cold, the next one in the series, Minutes to Midnight, is in the works. Now if I could only find my notes. Have you seen them? I need to quit blinking and finish my latest novel. Rebecca Watson isn’t happy her latest crime thriller isn’t finished. She told […]