Sometimes, sentences start to stack up. When that happens, they can feel as if they’re too similar to each other. In those spots, it’s good to check how those sentences differ. Because if you’re not careful, they can all sound the same and feel bland. See what I mean? I’ve caught sentences like this back-to-back … More CWM: #15 — No sentence variation
I’ve done one of these on commas before. I had talked about using commas to continuously add information to a sentence. But I haven’t talked about when to use a comma and when not to. Commas are complicated. What tends to get overlooked with them though is independent clauses and dependent clauses. An independent clause … More CWM: #14 — Misusing commas
Dialogue tags can be tricky. But they’re easy to understand after knowing the difference between them and action beats. Dialogue tags show who’s speaking and how they’re speaking. These can include but are not limited to: Dialogue tags are formatted with a comma before the ending quotation, and a period goes after the tag. For … More CWM: #13 — Dialogue tags vs. action beats
No matter what POV you write in, you’re going to come across the words feel or felt at some point. When I edit novels or when I edit my own work, I find a lot of feels and felts. These words are sometimes glossed over without realizing the potential that could be brought to your story if you write without them. Let … More CWM: #8 — The words feel and felt
I’m sure we’ve all come across a character in a book who we didn’t feel anything toward much. We weren’t worried about the character’s well-being. Which doesn’t help us want to continue reading. It can take many drafts to get into a character’s head and develop them on the page. Some characters are harder to write than … More CWM: #7 — Not developing characters
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