Tweet We need to have the talk. It’s time for us to define the relationship between your readers and your characters. I’m talking about point of view. Who gets point of view in your story, and how, is an important decision that you shouldn’t take lightly. For the purposes of time, I have to assume […]
Tweet The student of writing can come up with myriad metaphors for what writing is like. Call it painting. Call it shipbuilding. Call it a political race. Let me tell you one of my favorites. Writing is like sculpting. You take this raw idea and you cut away the unnecessary, the amorphous. What is left […]
Tweet What follows is a short excerpt from a story. The author, “Richard,” generously donated his work to be edited before a live audience (you). At my request, he made no edits to it. He simply typed the words that came into his head and let them be once they were down. I then edited […]
Tweet If everything goes as planned, my first novel, a fantasy, will be published by the Consortium later this year. I’ve been working on it for nearly six years. I think it’s ready. You should have seen the first draft I wrote back in 2007. It was, in a word, awful. The main character was pathetic, […]
Tweet My name is Thomas Beard, and I know writing. See that up there? That’s my thesis statement. In the next 478 words, I’m going to develop it, flesh it out, then restate it in my conclusion. Then do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to reread it. At least three times. […]
