Writer Unboxed

Remember your first job? If you’re like most people, you turned in an application at a local burger joint or grocery store, had a single short interview and were hired on the spot. Sometimes characters are “hired” for our stories in the same manner: we think through their history for a few minutes, think, “eh, […]

I’m hungover this morning.
I didn’t get my tender head from too many processed grilled meats or Mexican beers. My hangover came from a holiday writing binge.
Readers of this blog know that I’m a plodder when it comes to writing. Three to five carefully written pages a day is my usual m.o. I believe regular, sustained […]

It’s Memorial Day, so I know most people won’t be around today. Tomorrow, however, you may be dragging from too much time spent at the ribs-and-Sam-Adams table, and you’ll be looking for something–anything–to help motivate you back into work. Which is why I’ve decided to post a few downloadable programs to make your writing life […]

Surfing the best of the writers’ blogs so you don’t have to.
Book Expo America is over and we can all get back to our lives. Some of the gossip, tips and trends in publishing can be viewed here. The rumor, sadly, is true. Publishers across the board report that less books will be published in […]

It’s been a while since I’ve posted on movies, but I was relaxing in front of the tube-o-brain-death the other night and stumbled across the great classic flick, Gone with the Wind. It’s difficult to bypass such a film, so I didn’t try. Instead, I noticed something I’d never noticed before about the movie’s structure–particularly […]

Last week I blogged about the fabulous storytelling skills of one of this country’s most beloved authors, Laura Ingalls Wilder. Wilder wrote about what she knew, the American frontier and farm life in the late 19th century. Her success stemmed from her ability to wring tension and detail out of universal emotions. Each of her […]

Ah, Mondays. They can be as draining as a pocketful of kryptonite to our super-creative powers. But easy as a flinging on a cape, you can transform this most evil weekday into a productive workday.
What follows here is not for the squeamish
…or so promises James Patrick Kelly in his most clickable article Murder your Darlings. […]

The romantic-suspense genre is one interesting sect of the fiction market. The blend of romance and suspense can vary wildly, as can many other aspects of the story. Writer Unboxed recently asked about that and more with one of the genre’s newest starlings–and one of the blogosphere’s most contributive neighbors–Allison Brennan!
Update: Though this interview originally […]

Surfing the best of the writers’ blogs so you don’t have to.
This is for the rash of bloggers this week who are sick, out-of-town, enmeshed in graduation / mother’s day / BEA / pre-summer funks. Hope it cheers you up. My apologies if it annoys you. I don’t read Japanese either, so I hope […]

Yesterday, Kath blogged about the Little Writer in the Cramped Spare Room. Today, I’m going to tell you why you should be careful about those cramped spaces! A post for your health…
You’re working feverishly on your latest novel when you notice it—a tingling pins-and-needles sensation in your fingers and hand. Those of us who spend […]

One of the canons of modern fiction is to keep a tight check on our impulses to overload scenes with block descriptions. Adjectives and adverbs should be tightly controlled, show, don’t tell, and so forth. And then I read a great story written by someone who never picked up a writer’s manual, and who breaks […]

My mother-in-law hosted a sugar fest for Mother’s Day, and I’ve just barely emerged from my coma. Because the focus is still shaky, today you’re getting a smattering of unrelated (but hopefully still useful) offerings. Check out a good article on Ten Mistakes Writers don’t See at Holt Uncensored.
The Word Detective waves his magnifying glass […]