Little Cottage in the Northwoods

When you first sit down to write, you might ask yourself where do I start? Do I start with a plot? Or a character or a title?
When you build a house, there are blueprints you have to follow step by step. You can’t build the roof before you dig the basement.
Some writers start with outlines [...]

The revision stage isn’t as much fun as the creation stage. So, unless you’re trying to get your work published, don’t worry about it too much. If you’re just writing for yourself for fun, it doesn’t have to be perfect.
I write my scenes out of order. I write them as I’m inspired, then during the [...]

What I like most about writing is that sometimes there really aren’t any “rules.”
There are grammar rules, your story also needs conflict and sequential scenes so the story makes sense. But none of those things have to be done until the revision stage which I’ll talk about in the next post. In this post, [...]

Knowing how your character feels in situations is what’s important in a story. Let’s say your character meets a secondary character. Let’s call the main character, Sally, and the secondary character, Jane. In the opening scene, Jane is standing by her locker, and Sally, who is just coming into school, sees her. What is their [...]

The best way to make characters real is to come up with little details as well as big details. The character’s favorite food or favorite color might not seem important to you at first because there might not be any scenes in the story where the character is eating. But there could be a scene [...]