So when is it OK to use passive voice? Passive voice is useful and necessary when you don’t know who is acting, when what was done is more important than who did it, and when you want to speed up the narrative. When you don’t know who is acting: A fern was crushed. The tracker [...]

[Read more →]

Passive voice is to be avoided in writing. Why? Because it’s boring. Hmmm. So maybe I should have said, “Writers should avoid using the passive voice.” Is that more interesting than the first line I went with? There are “passive voice” cops who will complain about every instance of passive voice in a manuscript. And [...]

[Read more →]

We know we want conflict on every page because conflict is what keeps the readers turning the pages. They want tension. It’s true that we love blood and guts. We loved them in the days of the Coliseum and we still do love them. We want car chases. We want bombs. We want fistfights. When [...]

[Read more →]

We’ve established the fact that good stories need conflict. Plot is all about conflict and resolution. I think we’ve all heard some variation of the saying, “When the book gets boring, throw a body out a window.” Maybe because of the graphic violence on TV and in the movies we think, “If we need conflict, [...]

[Read more →]

It didn’t use to be much of a problem for novelists. Everyone wrote in past tense. First person past tense, or third person past tense. Past Tense—First Person: Yesterday I hit the ball, kicked the cat, and ate the pancakes. Past Tense—Third Person: Yesterday Timmy hit the ball, kicked the cat, and ate the pancakes. [...]

[Read more →]

Because of the limitations inherent in the first person point of view, writers will often opt for the third person. But the third person pov brings different limitations to the table. It is more distant that first person, for one thing. Look at a passage written in the two points of view. The First Person [...]

[Read more →]

How do you put in necessary backstory without losing your reader who wants to move forward? Well, instead of using an info dump, I think you should use an info dribble. Just like it sounds. Little bits of info here, and little bits of info there. Look again at the bit of reportage we made [...]

[Read more →]

The Pros? Readers hear the narrator speak in her own voice and, if she has an interesting voice, they feel attached to her right away. It’s like sitting across the table from her as she tells the story. You hear her side of the story, and you are prone to believe her. If she’s cute [...]

[Read more →]

So we’ve determined that a story must move. Hero has to move from point A to point B. But those letters can’t represent just any old points. You can’t move Hero from the bed to the breakfast table and expect anyone to care. Unless, perhaps, he has to fight a man-eating tiger along the way. [...]

[Read more →]

In children’s books, especially,  we see this sin. So many people choose to write for children because they want to educate readers, after all. So, I’ll give the red ribbon of second place of the Seven Deadly Sins to the sin of reportage. Yep, reportage. Lot’s of people call this author intrusion, or an info [...]

[Read more →]