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This week’s workout expands a great deal on what you did in HIWW No. 4 because it’s all about character. Last week I had you creating a basic character, listing out a handful of facts about her, generate some goals and story ideas, then go back and change one fact. From there you got to […]

A lot of writers—especially beginning writers—choose to believe that writers fall into one of two camps: Plot-based writers and Character-based (or Organic™) writers. The problem with this view is that it suggests that one can have plots without characters and vice versa. And, I suppose, this is true in a general sense; but not in […]

This exercise harkens back to what we covered in High Intensity Writing Workout No. 1. You’ll be using some of the skills you developed there to get through this workout. One “problem area” (to keep the workout metaphor working) for most writers early on in their careers involves tunnel vision. Whether working from notes or […]

One of the goals of any good writing is to pack a lot of information into as few words as possible. The biggest culprit in preventing this is the verb “to be.” The reason is simple: the verb is the lowest-common verb—it applies almost anywhere. But it is weak and flabby and applied too broadly. […]

Because I’ve started teaching online writing classes through Arizona State University’s Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, I’ve been having to put together exercises to help students understand and master a variety of techniques. One of the things I’m pretty much death on is using he said/she said or their variants in dialogue. I […]

The folks at Storybundle.com have put together two bundles where you get to set the price for what you buy. And these are smoking deals. First up in the Nanowrimo writing package. This is an incredible value. For the $20 I’d ask for my 21 Days to a Novel, you get ten writing books by […]

The Crusader Road is my latest book. It’s my first venture writing fiction in the Pathfinder™ universe. I had a lot of fun writing the book, and I think it turned out pretty well. If you want an unbiased opinion on that issue, you can read the review at Roqoo Depot. One of the most […]