First Word

The big revelation in storytelling ... pacing! How you pace your story can either absorb your readers or bore them. It's easier to define pacing when it comes to a screenplay. In a screenplay you have a short space to write either dialog or action. You also have to write these things in the average of 120 pages. The action cannot be bogged in minutia. You set the scene simply and quickly and move on. In books, you have a much wider berth. But if you want to keep the story moving and well paced then don't get bogged down in narrative or exposition. Yes, you do want to paint the scene with the right colors but you don't want to describe every last detail down to the color of the kitchen sink unless that is somehow important to the story. How can you pace your book? Move the dialog along and don't have random discussions about things that don't belong in the story or reveal anything interesting about your characters that the audience needs to know. Keep the scenes...

One of the hardest things to do when writing fiction is to create unique voices for each character. If you make all the characters sound alike it makes the writing flat and uninteresting. It also makes it difficult to get to know a character -- they all sound like the same person. When I teach my fiction writing workshops, I always teach writers the following concepts to help create a voice for each character. Phone a friend -- I'm being cute ... what I really mean is pick someone you know in real life. Hear how he or she talks. Take this person's voice and apply it to one of your characters. If you don't know someone who would "fit the part" then take an actor or actress or even a public figure and listen to how this person talks. Mimic their inflections and phrases in your character(s). My biggest insight: really listen and repeat. People have their own ways of saying things. So, you want to capture the unique essence of the voice. Formalism in modern writ...

Some writers have a bad habit of doing what we call "telling and not showing". They will do this in two different ways: #1 Underdeveloped scenes aka as impatient writing -- to progress a story faster than an ice melting on 220-degree pavement, writers will in one sentence or less tell you a major plot point. I call this impatient writing. The writer is often much more excited to get to the action and climax then to develop important plot points. For example, telling us a character got summoned to the police station for questioning and then just skipping to the after scene and briefly saying what happened. A police questioning scene is ripe for drama. Why would you skip over it, especially if it's an essential plot point. Sometimes writers just aren't as fascinated or excited about the scene so it's easier to just jump over it. This leads to... #2 Lack of story development -- when you skip really fast over important plot points, you are making your storytellin...