As you've probably heard, Tom Clancy passed away yesterday. Although I don't generally read books about soldiers or war, I read ...

Certain things turn me into a kid at Christmas time. That describes my mood as I waited for my ARC of Steven Pressfield's The Auth...

I've been looking back through the last several articles I've written and noticed a number of posts about characterization. That...

Writers, songwriters, chefs, parents getting their children to bed--in fact, every single one of us at some time or other--need to be cr...

I don't want terrible, gut-wrenching, things to happen to my characters. I've spent many hours crafting them and I know them ins...

Here's the rule: "Eliminate “protagonist + sense verb” phrases that make us watch your protagonist have an internal experienc...

Although Stephen King's advice changed my life where my writing is concerned, one of my favorite writers on writing is, and will for...

I've spent hundreds of hours over at tvtropes.org pouring over their character descriptions. The Barnum , for instance, is a kind ...

I thought I'd write about something a bit different today. Years ago, an acquaintance told me she thought numbers had meaning. Alt...

Let's talk about how to create strong characters. Today, I'm going to focus on creating extreme characters. In " Making ...