Don’t clog your lines with double attribution.
The author didn’t realize she was wasting words whenever her characters spoke.
In nearly every instance, she provided not only a dialogue tag, “Christina said,” but also a “beat” or “action tag,” a phrase describing what the character did as she spoke.
Consider this double attribution line:
“I’m so sorry,” Christina said, … Continue reading
Make them sense they’re really there.
This past week in Colorado Springs, we expected an inch of snow. We got six.
So I enjoyed a trip to Florida’s Gulf Coast. Mild temperatures, gentle breezes, tropical scents, and great fishing. Even better, I didn’t had to leave my house. I traveled through the pages of a well-crafted novel.
His setting, in effect, becomes a key character.
What do endorsements for your genre say?
At the bottom of the novel’s back cover, four short words offered excellent advice for any author writing in that genre.
This weekend at a thrift store, I’d scored a British edition of Graham Brown’s international thriller The Mayan Conspiracy (subtitled “A deadly secret that could change the world”).
Bestselling thriller writer Steve Berry’s words on the back … Continue reading