February 24, 2021
Something is Missing My critique group met this week via Zoom. One member is working on a memoir. The section we’ve been critiquing is fascinating. She was in Christchurch, New Zealand when the 2011 earthquake hit. In fact, she and her husband were in the Cathedral at the exact moment the earthquake hit and everything […]
October 28, 2020
How much backstory does a reader need in order to understand a character, and how soon does the writer need to include that information? The answer to the first part of that question is the usual—it depends. When to include the information is a little easier to pinpoint, but not always. Okay, you’re probably thinking, […]
February 6, 2019
When I wrote The Crows, I thought it was a single title mystery. It wasn’t until after the The Crows was released and I was doing book talks that I was asked when the next P.J. Benson Mystery would be out. A second book? Hmm. As I wrote the second P.J. Benson Mystery (As the […]
January 30, 2019
I just spent 2 days working out (in my mind and on paper) why my secondary characters are doing (or have done) certain things. My P.J. Benson Mysteries are all told in first person, so I can’t have scenes where the reader sees or hears what secondary characters are doing or thinking, but that doesn’t […]
August 24, 2016
Last Saturday I attended my local Romance Writers of America Chapter’s meeting. This month’s MMRWA program focused on the first three pages of members’ WIPs (works in progress). I’m not exactly sure how many members submitted their first three pages, but there were at least a dozen read during the program ranging from YA to […]
July 31, 2013
We often hear that it’s bad to use backstory. It doesn’t hook the reader. Stops the forward movement of the story. Readers skip it; editors reject it. But wait! Don’t you want to let the reader know what happened in your character’s past that’s causing him/her to act this way? Yes…no…maybe. The problem is backstory […]