Archive:
Fiction
Want Jerry as Your Mentor? Learn More Too many novelists create a villain who does bad things because he’s the bad guy. He might as well appear in a melodrama, wearing a black hat and a cape while twirling his handlebar mustache. But a melodramatic villain is a cliché by definition — predictable, unrealistic, and […]
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Want Jerry as Your Mentor? Learn More How do you keep readers riveted to the end? Conflict is the engine of fiction. Readers love it. Dianna and I recently celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary and agree on almost everything. That’s a gift in real life. In the pages of a novel? Boring. The more […]
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Want Jerry as Your Mentor? Learn More What is Third-Person Point of View? Do you wonder, as so many budding writers do, how to master Point of View? Third-person point of view is most common in storytelling—and with good reason. While first-person may be the easiest POV for readers to understand, because that makes […]
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Want Jerry as Your Mentor? Learn More Knowing the history of your main character allows you to craft a character arc that keeps readers engaged from start to finish. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, author C.S. Lewis sends the Pevensie children to live with a professor in the English countryside to […]
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Writing a series is daunting. Each installment must both stand alone and work as part of the whole. You’re forced to keep up with all the elements you exploit in a single novel and make sure they serve the entire entity: characters, plot, settings, everything. Having written six adult series and ten children’s series, I […]
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