Start with an event, a cause. This cause will result in an incident, but don’t decide on the incident yet. the cause may be minor; Joe stops to look in the pet store window. the cause may be major; Joe drives his car through a red light. Determine a cause for that cause. Joe lost […]

Here’s how to make your computer help you find grammar and line editing problems. Awkward phrases, missing words, repeated words in close proximity, and repeated sentence length will be much more obvious and easier to identify to fix. It requires Word, WordPad and Excel. Plus a bit of computer skills, or, just follow the instructions […]

“Begin at the start of the ending” is a writing aphorism. Open your story there and you set yourself up to easily carry through without losing the reader’s attention. # During a Twitter discussion on the use of literary devices, I said that I use flashback because I tend to start near the end and […]