Sometimes when a memoir author starts a book, they don't know the point of their story. Memoirs are built out of personal experience, but the events need to stand for something universal. I took a fine baseball tour with my 11-year-old Little Leaguer in Stealing Home. The story stood for the faith that you can't tell […]
Grammar Girl Mignon Fogarty asks, "Why doesn’t 'Veterans Day' have an apostrophe?" Ah, the apostrophe. Humble and omnipresent punctuation mark, misused everywhere. Your usage for this weekend's holiday could be "Veterans' Day" (quite rare), but not "Veteran's Day" (incorrect) In using 'Veterans Day', the Grammar Girl says, "Veterans" is acting like an adjective, telling you […]
Writing seems serious, especially when we have dreams for it. We're making novels or creating great nonfiction that will enrich the lives of readers everywhere. Maybe our memoir will help people see how struggle shows the way to survival. While those are noble and necessary goals, they can get in the way of playtime. Most […]
Think of them like escape pods Flashback timing can be tricky. Flashbacks aren't limited to fiction. Narrative nonfiction like memoir can also rely on storytelling from an earlier period in the tale. Flashbacks deliver context, so readers can see the reasons and sense of character decisions and actions. They deliver the context with maximum […]
Speaking clearly lets us absorb the dialogue Novels are built on acres of dialogue. You can always point to a book like E.L Doctrow's Ragtime as the exception, but so very much talking pushes a story forward. You can help your characters tell the story by helping everyone know who's speaking at all times. Where […]
Summarizing is a superior skill to call on while writing, but it can be vexing to slim things down. One trick to try is the magic bullet of bullets, the copy that starts with a bullet symbol. We're trained to keep the writing concise when we begin with a bullet. A set of opening pages […]
You might be the writer who doesn't need summaries. You're probably not, since you're not the Almighty. Only the Great Maker could skip the step of telling people what the creation was promising. The stories that started the world were formed when there was nothing else to watch or read or hear. You and I […]
Many books sell on the strength of their authors. Authors who are bestsellers have their names above any title, riding on the reputation and good regard for prior books. New authors can reach for this power too. It begins with your author's bio. That summary of your life is important for debut nonfiction writers, with […]
A character knows about what they want. They are unaware of what they need. That want is external. Anna wants to gain control over her life's choices: relationships, work, pleasure. Even choosing which others she will serve. At the start of the twentieth century, that control was beyond a woman's reach — an unprivileged woman, […]
We have expectations about the things we love. If you love stories (all authors do) then you have expectations about their elements. These are tropes. When they're characters in the story, they might be archetypes. When you don't like these expected elements, because they feel tired, you might call them cliches. They are a delicious […]
