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Filling my toolbox

My writing education has a theme. I cannot learn and apply a new concept or technique until my brain is ready for it. I’ve read book after book and taken numerous classes on all aspects of writing. Characterization, point of view, dialog, plotting, and so on. But often, even if I see the value of

Did I dazzle you?

“Did I dazzle you? Did I jump off the page?” Those two lines are from the movie 21, which my husband and I watched over the weekend. I actually liked it, but what really stuck with me were those two lines. In the movie, those words are thrown back in the face of a professor

What’s the big(ger) idea?

How do you write a “bigger book”? Yes, I’ve blogged about this before, but a recent series by one of my new favorite writing resources–yes, Larry Brooks over at storyfix.com–helped the concept of “writing big” finally click in my brain. He seems to be helping things click a lot lately. Not sure if it’s Mr.

Down to the studs

I once got to work on a charity building project where we took the man’s house down to the studs and built it back up again. (Ha! I know which kind of studs you were thinking of!) Well, today I did that with a movie, but without the build up, or the drywall dust. See,

Taking a shortcut

A few months ago I read a good writing book called Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell. In it, Bell advocates going through six books and writing a note card for every scene to describe its POV, location, type of scene, and purpose. Then when you’re done (six months later), you periodically pull out