The most important page of any book is the first. Those first few paragraphs and that first sentence can make or break the book. How many times have you picked up a novel, read the first page, and put it back down? I had the good fortune to take a seminar with best-selling author Jody…
If you’ve ever read any of my books, you might notice that I LOVE a good magic system. The Witch of Cheyne Heath series has three, and my upcoming series, The Shining Continent, has five, with even more planned for future installments. There are a few things I always think about when creating a magic…
Most writers fall into one of two camps: plotters or pantsers. Plotters write detailed outlines before they put pen to paper, figuring out the characters, the story, and the world in advance. Pantsers, also known as discovery writers, might have a basic idea of what they’re going to write, but they leave the details to…
When creating a dynamic character to carry your story, it’s important that they be strongly motivated to drive the plot forward. It makes them more interesting, and the story a lot more fun. When I was writing the first novel in The Witch of Cheyne Heath series, Waking the Witch, I was researching psychological models…
Often when I’m developing a character or a story, I get lost in my own head with all the possibilities available to me, and I need something to anchor me and narrow my choices in a simple, direct, and progressive way. To help me think through a character’s inner struggle, I developed this 10-point questionnaire…
Sometimes inspiration doesn’t come to me spontaneously and I need external prompts. The divinatory system of the tarot offers a complex map of human psychology, archetypes, and challenges that I’ve found a great starting point for understanding and developing characters and stories. In trying to harness all that intuitive potential planning my books, I came up with this approach to using the cards as a storyteller.