Hello Writer’s Podcast + Blog
Writing for Young Readers
There are those who believe that writing for young readers is easier than writing for adults, but they couldn’t be more wrong! When we write for young readers, we need to consider the same things for them as we do adult readers, with the added...
Improve Your Narrative Voice
VOICE. It's a word that gets thrown around a lot among writers. With good reason: it's one of the most important skills you can master, because it’s what brings a narrator and/or a character to life. But it’s also one of the hardest to explain, to...
How to Use Craft Resources
Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of writing advice that’s out there? I do. It is exhausting. I have a huge pile of writing books I have yet to get to, a bunch of writing podcasts I barely have time to listen to, and writer upon...
Describing Human Characters Well
Let's talk about describing human characters well. That’s right, humans. Not fantastical flying creatures or beings from other worlds. Plain old, everyday humans. Which means that we don’t have the luxury of quite as much space on the page to...
Tie Your Scenes Together
It's a really common problem that a writer will be writing along, discovering what comes next as they write, and before they know it they have taken a path they weren’t expecting and wound up in some plot territory that they don’t really want to be...
How to Revise a Novel
How do we revise a novel? It's a big job, that's for certain. When faced with the task, writers often fall into the trap of making small fixes, such as grammar, sentence structure and word choice that would be much better held off until after the...
How to Use Feedback on Your Writing
What happens after you’ve received some feedback, whether it was from a loved one, a beta reader, or an editor? We all know that getting feedback on your writing is an important part of the process, but where do you start when you’ve got pages and...
Building Tension in Your Novel
When I think of tension in a story, my first thought is of suspense. We are waiting for something to jump out of a dark corner or for the final confrontation between hero and villain. Our bodies are tense, preparing for what my 13-year-old son...
The Elevator Pitch
The idea of the elevator pitch comes from the old Hollywood days. Back then, a writer might happen to find themselves on an elevator with a studio exec. The wisdom was, you should always have a pitch for a movie ready when that happened. You have...
How Much of This Story is YOUR Story?
I once heard the author Elizabeth Gilbert say, and I’m paraphrasing here, that a reader would likely find more of herself in her works of fiction than her works of memoir. The truth is that all writers bring themselves to their stories, no matter...
