Archive:
The Writing Craft
So you want to write a book. Becoming an author can change your life—not to mention give you the ability to impact thousands, even millions, of people. But writing a book isn’t easy. As a 21-time New York Times bestselling author, I can tell you: It’s far easier to quit than to finish. You’re going […]
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How I wish I had known as a teenager what I know now! At 19 I worked full-time as a sportswriter for a daily newspaper. I loved my job, but I was ambitious and wanted to see if I could sell a story to the Features editor. I worked hard on one, on my own […]
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Want Jerry as Your Mentor? Learn More A successful novel must feature an event, known as the inciting incident, that irreversibly ignites the story. The stronger your inciting incident, the more dramatic, compelling, and engrossing your novel. A weak or nonexistent inciting incident means no reason for your main character to become heroic, or […]
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Based on what I hear wherever I speak, it’s clear that beginning writers agonize as much over find their writing voice as over any other issue. Trust me, while it’s crucial you find your unique writing voice, it really isn’t all that complicated. You wouldn’t be able to tell that from the plethora of blogs, […]
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Writing a compelling story, especially if you’re new at this, can be grueling. Conflicting advice online can overwhelm you, making you want to quit before you’ve written a word. But you know more than you think. Stories saturate our lives. We talk, think, and communicate with story in music, on television, in video games, in […]
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