As writers, we have all experienced that moment where we read our work aloud and find ourselves thinking - would my character actually say that if they were a real person? Would I ever say that? It can be a struggle to improve dialogue that just isn’t working, whether its issue is giving too much exposition or it simply sounds bland and cheesy. Here are 8 tips to incorporate into your day-to-day writing that will make your dialogue more interesting: 1. Nobody Says Anything Un

Let’s face it. No one is perfect. We all make mistakes. As cliché as that is it’s true. Clichés are something we want to try avoiding as writers and authors, but sometimes they echo in our everyday work. Why do we avoid them? Well, any editor with years of experience will tell you that using a phrase that’s often repeated (in most circumstances) doesn’t reflect our true uniqueness. That being said… not everything an editor tells you is correct either. It’s your work and you h

I was new to this whole writing thing. Well, not completely new. I’d been writing for many years already, but I’d never researched what goes into writing well and crafting a well-written novel. Until that day. One afternoon late summer 2017, I finally started searching. How do you write a novel, and write it well? How does one go about outlining it? What goes into editing? You can imagine how overwhelmed I felt at the massive amount of information I got. As a writer just disc

If you could sit down to a meal with your favourite villain who would choose and why? As a writer of suspense novels, I am always reading about and researching that infamous “bad guy.” So, who would I pick to share a meal with? I’ll get to that shortly. First, let’s discuss how to create a villain your readers will love to hate. Sounds like a cliché I know, but after all, we do want our readers to like our characters…even the bad guys…enough to buy our books. Count Dracula,

Characters are the most important things in a novel. Readers follow characters, live their lives, cry with them, laugh with them, scream at them and feel for them. Characters are a small piece of the author but they also take on their own personality. The key thing is not to force it, to let the characters take their own direction, even if it doesn’t fit with what you were aiming for. You might learn something about yourself through them. I probably sound crazy when I say my

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