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 […]