Building Your World in Your First Line

by | Sep 26, 2017 | Writing Tips

Jonathan Ammon   When we’re leaving a bookstore, my wife Tatiana and I like to play a game: we go through our bag of purchases, and we read aloud the first line from each of the new books. Whoever has the book with the agreed-upon best first line wins. Our game...

Narrative Summary – How? Why? When?

by | Jul 26, 2017 | Writing Tips

Teresa Crumpton   I get it that, in fiction, dramatic events need to be shown in scene. A single point-of-view character wants something and strives against obstacles to get it—all shown in the real-time of the story. And mundane events need to be omitted or...

How To Write the Emotion-Packed Scene

by | Jan 29, 2017 | Writing Tips

Teresa Crumpton   Get Inside Your Character’s Head At the start of a story, I like to be very deep inside my character because I hope my readers will empathize with the character and come along for the story journey. I practice seeing through his eyes. Depending...

Ways to Create Subtext

by | Jan 17, 2017 | Writing Tips

Teresa Crumpton   “…but I know it when I see it—” Subtext can be hard to define, but it’s worth the effort. It makes room for the part of a scene the intelligent reader brings to the story. Of course, the expertise of the clever-and-confident author sparks the...

Battling the Dreaded SAP

by | Oct 19, 2016 | Writing Tips

Teresa Crumpton     When I’m editing fiction or nonfiction, one of the most common speed bumps I trip on is The Simultaneous Action Problem (SAP). Sounds serious, right? It’s not. It’s also known as the As/While Issue, and it’s just a speedbump. It happens...
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