The One-Hour MFA (Table of Contents)
Michael Kimball’s brief and excellent book on the craft of writing fiction, The One-Hour...
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Punctuation and Last Note
Punctuation “Commas can save your life.” A writing teacher told me that. The idea is that the...
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Endings and Revising
Endings I don’t like to know how a piece of fiction I’m writing is going to end. This is true when...
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Description & Details and Figurative Language
Description and Details I cut a lot of description out of my novels. I will stop reading a short...
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Character and Dialogue
Character A writer can’t actually create people. The characters are only scratches on the page....
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Syntax & Diction and Narration & Voice
On the continuum of how much voice (in a sense, style) can be infused into a particular piece of fiction, I have always thought first-person narration allows the fiction writer the most latitude, the most difference.
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Language & Sentences, and Acoustics
Working with acoustics is a different way to find the right word, or the right place for the right word. It’s a different way to write or revise a sentence or a group of sentences.
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Word Counts, and Story & Plot
Word Counts Getting the material down is the hardest part for me. Because of this, I often find it...
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Openings and Process
This is the best advice I have learned concerning different ways to think about openings, process, story and plot, language and sentences, acoustics, syntax and diction, narration and voice, character, dialogue, description and details, figurative language, endings, revision, and punctuation.
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