The first character in a book who snagged a spot in my heart is a character you know. In fact, who doesn’t know The Cat in the Hat? Yes, the book’s plot is fun and told in clever rhyme. The
Add fire to your writing
Adding sensory details to your writing is like pouring lighter fluid on a campfire. Poof! Stand back as flames dance high and the wood crackles. This writing style engages the reader. But what is sensory writing? It’s text that taps
Dauntless Dialogue
What makes plucky, spirited, gritty—dauntless—dialogue? In his book Revision & Self-Editing, author James Scott Bell states dialogue needs to push the plot forward or reveal character. For fun, let’s analyze a dialogue from my current work-in-progress, a novel called I Be Brave.
Conquering Mountains
Have you ever hiked a trail that turned into a trial? I’ve been caught in downpours and snow while hiking the Colorado Rockies. Enthusiasm and energy wane halfway up a 14’er (a mountain over 14,000 feet). So how do you conquer
Goosey Questions
I scanned the nearby pond and lawns. Empty. HONK. SQUAWK. HONK. The racket continued without flocks flying overhead. Jogging around the corner, I discovered the early morning culprits. Two geese stood on the tip-top peak of a two-story house. Geese?
Digging up Descriptions
How can you improve description in your writing? Don’t leave it to adjectives. Avoid adverbs. Instead, dig deeper. My favorite exercise for descriptive writing comes from James Scott Bell’s book Revision & Self-Editing. It kicks up creativity, especially for describing characters’
They called me “Grotch”
They called me “Grotch.” That’s okay because I struggled to pronounce their names: Faiso, Hawo, Fatuma, Farhiya, Yurub, Zamzam… Six years ago, I’d never heard of the country they’d fled–Somalia–and I was nervous around these East African women who wore