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When considering who gives out the best writing advice in the world, the first name that pops up might not be Arnold Schwarzenegger. But a decade ago, Schwarzenegger presented his “6 Rules of Success” in a now-famous commencement speech at…
A chilling cohort of soul-devouring wraiths has risen from the netherworld to crack open the final seal of the apocalypse scroll and bring the world to a fiery end. To keep the scroll out of their clutches, Dru must solve…
Has your writing fallen into a black hole? Has your pacing dropped to a crawl, or your suspense become a snore? Do you just feel stuck? You might be sabotaging your own writing without even knowing it. But don’t panic.…
When a character in your story speaks a foreign language, should you write it out in that language, or in English? How can you make the dialogue sound exotic without confusing the reader? These are tricky questions. Foreign languages can…
A reporter recently interviewed me about how to be more organized. Which I secretly found funny, because I don’t feel particularly organized. At all. And yet people frequently tell me that I am the most organized person they know. Pfft.…
The Pomodoro Technique is deceptively simple. Set a timer for half an hour or so, ignore all distractions, and focus on your work. On the surface, it seems far too simple to be effective. But it does work. Amazingly well.…
Theme seems to be one of those angst-triggering bogeymen that writers constantly wrestle with. But when you examine it closely, there’s really nothing complicated about it. Theme is simply the lesson the main character learns over the course of the…
A wicked enchantress has stolen an amulet that will destroy the world in 24 hours. Unless Dru and her sorcerer friends can get it back, the seas will boil, the stars will fall from the sky, and the earth itself…
Have you ever sat down to write, and found that everything you wrote seemed terrible? Every writer has felt that way, at one time or another. Here’s the uncomfortable truth about those critical thoughts: they can actually help you become…
I’ve talked to dozens of best-selling authors about their early years, before they were published. And the similarities between them are striking. On average, they wrote about half a dozen unpublished manuscripts before they sold a novel. (By the way, this is what I call the Myth of the First Novel. Because it’s hardly ever…
I’ll let you in on a secret: readers want your character to change. They know, deep down, that your character is unhappy with the status quo at the beginning of your book. Something is terribly wrong in your character’s life, and things can’t keep going on this way. Something’s got to give. Readers fervently hope…
LAURENCE MACNAUGHTON 