Welcome back to Firsts in Fiction, loyal listeners! This week, while Steve and Heather are with their families on vacations, Aaron is joined by novelist Alton Gansky and Maya Goode. Maya Goode has an undergrad degree in psychology, and the three talk tips and tricks for making your characters have believable psyches.
Welcome back to Firsts in Fiction, loyal listeners! Steve and Aaron take this week to look at penning the perfect title. Check out the YouTube video below. Find Steve and Heather and Aaron on Facebook, Twitter, iTunes, and Stitcher. A simple Google search on how to find a title for your novel will return a plethora of results, and…
Welcome back to Firsts in Fiction! This is the exciting conclusion of last week’s episode discussing the 8 rules for writing fiction from Kurt Vonnegut. Andrew Panebianco joined to talk about Vonnegut’s rules.
Welcome back to Firsts in Fiction, loyal listeners! Our terrific trio is back in action! For the first time in several weeks, Aaron, Heather and Steve are all on again! And Aaron brought a friend! Andrew Panebianco joins us this week to talk about Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 rules for writing fiction. And while we’ve done…
Welcome back to Firsts in Fiction, loyal listeners! This week marks the much anticipated return of Heather Luby! For those of you who have waited so patiently to see her on video, now is your chance. Check out the YouTube video below. This week, we look at how to read like a writer.
[This week on Author Spotlight, I feature Normandie Fischer, author of Becalmed. She studied sculptures in Italy for a number of years before returning home to complete her degree. In the seventies, she began editing and writing technical books in the DC area while teaching sculpture and taking portrait commissions. Her first novel, Becalmed, released recently…
It’s a pretty popular thing for accomplished writers to compile lists of rules* for writing fiction. This week, Steve and I tackle 10 of these rules as suggested by Elmore Leonard. Elmore Leonard cut his teeth writing westerns, but quickly moved on to crime novels. He wrote nearly two dozen novels (many of them best…
This week, Steve and I look at the importance of first lines in fiction. The information is largely taken and adapted from my book, Firsts in Fiction: First Lines. The first line of your novel is especially important for a few reasons. Firstly, you want to make sure you impress an editor. To maximize your…
This week Steve and I look at archetypes, how they can inform our story, and how to use them effectively without falling into stereotypical character and plot structures. To begin, we need to understand what an archetype is. Long story short, we can think of archetypes of as shapes that our characters and stories fill.