Weasel Words

Writers tend to have words that they use over and over without noticing. If you don’t think you do, go back and read your scenes out loud. See if you can pick up on a repeated word or two. Mine are:
anyway, just, well, sure (like “he sure does smile a lot” rather than “he smiles [...]

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Character Motivation

You can have your character want anything as long as it’s strongly motivated. More importantly, you can make your reader believe almost any goal you set up as long as you justify it with motivation.
When I think of this, I think of the movie, Romancing the Stone. Remember when the main characters were running from [...]

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Tag Lines and In Medias Res

Note: My approach to discussing dialog, is to write dialog by ‘conversing’ with my imaginary friend, Piper. (I know, I’m strange, and tend to have imaginary friends with me. Good thing I’m a writer, huh?) However, I’ll start the whole article by giving you a glimpse of Sooner or Later by Vickie McDonough:
[...]

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