The One Thing I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Creating Characters

There’s a lot of conflicting advice out there about characters. Do you make them quirky and unusual (like Amelia Bedelia), or more ordinary  (like Charlie Brown)? Do you make them heroic (someone readers might aspire to be, like Katniss), or deeply flawed (like FH in Jesus’s Son)? Do you make them raw and human (like […]

Quick Writing Tips Free Video Series

Looking for some quick, easy ways to improve your writing? Here’s a free series of short (each is under 5 minutes) writing tips videos. They focus on some of the most common prose problems that I’ve seen writers struggle with over my two decades of teaching creative writing. My goal in making these videos was […]

Writing Advice Part II (my top six other best pieces of advice)

The single best piece of writing advice I ever got was to write the book you most want to read (more on that here). After that, here are six other bits of writing advice that have made the biggest difference for me (and that I need to keep reminding myself of to keep on going). […]