The Ultimate Guide to Writing Better Than You Normally Do. Writing is a muscle. Smaller than a hamstring and slightly bigger than a bicep, and it needs to be exercised to get stronger. Think of your words as reps, your paragraphs as sets, your pages as daily workouts. Procrastination is an alluring siren taunting you to google the country where Balki from Perfect Strangers was from, and to arrange sticky notes on your dog in the shape of hilarious dog shorts. The blank white page. Mark Twain once said, “Show, don’t tell.” Finding a really good muse these days isn’t easy, so plan on going through quite a few before landing on a winner. There are two things more difficult than writing. It’s so easy to hide in your little bubble, typing your little words with your little fingers on your little laptop from the comfort of your tiny chair in your miniature little house. It’s no secret that great writers are great readers, and that if you can’t read, your writing will often suffer. Available in print withThe Best of McSweeney’s Internet Tendency
12 Character Writing Tips for Fiction Writers | Writing Tips Character writing tips. Characters are the heart and soul of every story. Almost every great story is about people. Plot, setting, themes, and every other element of fiction is secondary to realistic characters that an audience can connect with on an intellectual or emotional level. There are exceptions, of course. Some readers enjoy plot-driven stories, but they never seem to achieve the massive popularity that stories with rich, layered characters achieve. We connect with characters in fiction for any number of reasons. Some writers argue that it’s not necessary for readers to connect or identify with characters in a story. Character Writing Tips Readers won’t care about characters unless they are believable. The answer is simple: the best characters are realistic. Here are 12 character writing tips to help you develop characters that feel like real people: Backstory: we are born a certain way, but our life experiences continually mold and shape us. How do you create characters?