When it comes to your story arc, you spend hours and days and several cups of coffee plotting your outline to make sure each point is executed to perfection. But are you showing rather than telling your reader along the way? 1) Exposition The…
You’re sitting at a local coffee shop, waiting for your friend to arrive. You sip peacefully on your coffee, across from you sits your friend’s cup which you bought for them to surprise them. Suddenly the door to the coffee shop is open more…
Happiness is such an elusive and complicated word. And showing a character experiencing happiness can be all the more complex, especially when you need to do it through showing rather than telling the reader. Within the idea of happiness, there are…
Whether you have an important test coming up, your boss asks you to do a big project at work, or you’re a teacher in any given week, we all experience stress in our lives. How stress affects us and how we deal with stress can be crucial indicators…
Authors often make the mistake of assuming that writing dialogue will be easy. You talk every day, how hard can it be to write someone speaking? But the truth is, speech involves nuances that completely separate it from your narrative voice. You…
There are moments that the words don’t reach, there is suffering too terrible to name… This tear-jerking song from Hamilton is one of many examples of what it’s like for a character to experience ‘grief’. There are many examples of grief…
It’s not easy to talk about or go through, but going through emotional or physical pain can be a significant part of what shapes our lives. Thinking back on your life, you can probably remember with very sharp clarity all of the moments you’ve…
If you’ve ever taken a writing workshop class in your lifetime, you’ve likely heard your instructor smugly say the phrase, “Show, don’t tell,” as a general criticism of your writing. For those who aren’t familiar with this phrase that…
[sam_pro id=1_11 codes=”true”] BOOM! POW! SLAP! Reading a comic book is like reading a movie. You hear the words and their accompanying sounds, you see the scenes in vivid colors, you (the director) get to point your camera at various angles and…
Every person you come across in the world is utterly unique. They each have their own upbringings, experiences, public thoughts, private thoughts, fears, dreams, loves, and losses that work together to make up who they are. Every person has a whole…
