Donald Maas Category

How to Handle Criticism—Part II

Posted on February 23, 2016 2 Comments

What a difference a week makes. I’m more at peace now than I was just six and seven days ago. And I also noticed I’ve put up other posts from time to time about handling criticism. Last week was very difficult for me. I felt humiliated in some ways, and I had to humble myself […]

Putting Fire in Your Fiction–Part V

Posted on June 24, 2015 Leave a Comment

The last few weeks, we’ve been looking in-depth about how to insert tension into every scene, because without it, the scene falls flat. We’ve looked at tension in dialogue, in exposition, action, hyping up low-tension scenes, and today, we’ll look at creating tension where there is none.

Putting Fire in Your Fiction–Part IV

Posted on June 17, 2015 Leave a Comment

Last time, we talked about tension. Tension is the most necessary ingredient in any fiction you write. Click to tweet. Using Donald Maass’ The Fire in Fiction as a resource, we covered Tension in Dialogue, Tension in Action, and Tension in Exposition. Today, we’ll look at sprucing up low-tension scenes and avoiding the traps.

Putting Fire in Your Fiction

Posted on April 22, 2015 Leave a Comment

The tagline to Donald Maas’ The Fire in Fiction is “passion, purpose, and techniques TO MAKE YOUR NOVEL GREAT.” The book covers everything from characterization, the story world, scenes, dialogue, and voice. Each chapter has a set of practical tools dealing with each section from that chapter. As an example, I’ll talk about Chapter Three, […]

Writing–The Mystery of Characters Part I

Posted on April 15, 2015 Leave a Comment

What is a character? An imaginary person we writers think up. How did I create Meghan Gallagher? She started out as a nineteen-year-old very unlikeable spoiled brat, which is what I wanted her to be, but soon learned no one wants to read about a spoiled brat, even though she was going to change drastically. […]

Breakout III – General Story Techniques

Posted on January 16, 2015 1 Comment

This week, we’ve been looking at Donald Maas’ Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook. I trust you have had your whistle whetted to learn more from this writing resource. Yesterday, we looked at Lessons 13-24, Part II, Plot Development. The lessons covered everything from subplots, to adding tension in different ways, to how and when to […]

Writing to Breakout II – Plot

Posted on January 15, 2015 Leave a Comment

This week, we’re looking at Donald Maas’ Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook. My goal is to inspire and educate you to the basics of writing, and hopefully help you find resources to enhance your writing. Yesterday, we looked at Lessons 1-12, Part I, Character Development from Donald Maas. The lessons covered everything from adding heroic […]

One Thing I Know

I follow Christ. His timing is perfect, and sometimes I get it right, and sometimes, I’ve tried to step out when it wasn’t the right time. I’ve done “previews” of what I felt God wanted me to do before and have met with some small success, but it was never the right time and nothing […]

Delay, Delay, Delay, Part 1

It seems as though my life has been made up of one delay after another — with the possible exception of my birth. I was small, only 5 lb., 8 oz. and had to be in an incubator for some days. I was released from the hospital when I was 13 days old. My first […]

FINISHING WELL

My first two novels went like clockwork, once the literary agency I was signed with decided to publish them through a special Amazon program. Meghan’s Choice was released in November 2017, and Rose’s Redemption followed in 2018. No problem. More about this in the next post.