A couple of events conspired recently to turn into an important revelation.

The first event was getting the feedback from my beta readers. One told me a certain chapter stopped her cold and it took her a couple weeks to pick the manuscript up again. Uh-oh! Another told me she struggled through the same chapter. Double uh-oh!

Then, about two weeks ago, as I was reading through a chapter of a novel by a member of my writers’ group, I experienced a similar problem. Half-way through I just had to put it down. Uh-oh again! As I thought about why that was, I realized that while his chapter was well written in many ways, its major flaw was how much backstory it contained.

That’s when the 25 Watt light bulb over my head began to flicker.

My problematic chapter had a similar problem: too much b...

Welcome to the first full-week edition of Great Stuff! We’ve got craft pieces on info-dumping, writing sex scenes, and overusing particular words; business pieces on publishing, KDP Select, and book bloggers; floundering through social media; a tech article on how Google Glass might be used to read books in the future—or might not be; and a writing life piece on building good relationships with your readers.

CRAFT

Ah, the dreaded info-dump. If, like me, you’re a current or former professional who also writes, you can fall into the trap of killing the flow of a story by dumping information on the reader. Independent editor Jodie Renner (@JodieRennerEd) provides strategies for providing Info with Attitude that get the key things the reader needs to know across while keeping the action ...

[This is a reposting of a piece that was originally published on the Cochise Writers blog on September 10, 2011.]

Before I get to the first real topic in this series, I need to give a shout-out to local writer/poet/editor Harvey Stambrough for a blog post that he put up yesterday, “A Dozen Ways to Make Your Critique Group Work.” Good stuff there. Well worth your time to follow the link and give it a look.

New members of a critique/writers’ group will say, “I don’t know how to do this [provide feedback].” The tendency, I suspect, is to think they have to replicate what they had to do in high school and/or college English classes: things like identify and explain the symbolism in a passage, say, or compare and contrast the use of metaphor with onomatopoeia.

Nope! Nope, nope, nope...

Welcome to the new and improved, or at least changed, version of Great Stuff for Writers! We’ve got 10 terrific posts on character development (and bumping them off), publishing and publicity tips, book design hints, and some thoughts on the life of a writer. Enjoy!

CRAFT

I’m not a fan of the 20- (or 200-) questions approach to character development, but thriller writer Tom Pawlik (@TomPawlik) offers 9 Ingredients of Character Development, centered around using the word character as the mnemonic for the ingredients. Maybe it’ll work for you.

Speaking of characters, what happens if they refuse to do what you want them to? That’s great! James Scott Bell (@jamesscottbell) provides sound advice on The Kill Zone on how to Let Your Characters Live and Breathe, particularly for those of u...

Guess everyone wore themselves out with all that Great Stuff they wrote earlier in the week. That leaves us today with a BIG ANNOUNCEMENT (as you can see below), a good piece on effective dialogue, and one more piece on movies, and how books become movies.

ANNOUNCEMENT

Great Stuff is changing again. As I get closer to the launch of my debut science fiction novel, The Eternity Plague, I’ve come to realize I need to start writing more about it. Also, I’ve been neglecting my Critique Technique posts, and I need to reactivate them too.

So, starting next Monday, Great Stuff for Writers will switch to a once-a-week format...

Turn on your Observer to watch out for coincidences, more bad ebook deals (this one from Amazon, if you can believe it), and whether ebook gift cards are a good idea for your book. There’s all that and more in today’s Great Stuff.

CRAFT

Barbara O’Neal (@barbaraoneal) writes about Cultivating The Observer, that part of our writer selves that does just two things: notice and record. Notice as much as possible of the details around us, and record them for later use in our writing. Her Writer Unboxed piece is full of examples and illustrations of The Observer at work. Is yours?

What a coincidence! Well, no, not really, but Katie Weiland’s (@KMWeiland) vlog about Your Secret Weapon Against Story Coincidences might just come at a time when it’s just what you needed to read. Or not...

Just a light reading list for you today but of course every one’s got value: the keys to writing in general and short stories and screenplays in particular, the role of the reader, and how to work well with a graphic artist. It’s all Great Stuff. Enjoy!

CRAFT

If you’ve ever wondered How to Write a Short Story (and who hasn’t, if you’ve tried?), James Scott Bell’s (@jamesscottbell) piece on The Kill Zone is an excellent discussion of what makes a short story different from a longer work, besides length (duh!). The answer his “boys in the basement” came up with after a friend asked Bell the question, is that “a short story is about one shattering moment,” which can be internal (emotional, psychological) or external. So can’t a novel also have a shattering moment? Of course...

Variety in your writing life. Rachelle Gardner advocates it and we’ve got it: craft-wise, business-wise, life-wise, even wise-cracking-wise. Great—even wise—tools for your toolkit.

CRAFT

Allison Vesterfelt (@allyvest) guest posts on Jeff Goins’ blog with the question, Is Your Writing Timeless? Yes, she really does mean, is your writing dealing with issues that will still matter a long time from now? Now, that seems like a tall order, a task reserved for “literary” fiction and not for the other genres that are too often dismissed as “mere entertainment.” Yet non-literary fiction can certainly deal with questions of how people deal with big issues in their lives—mortal or psychological danger, loneliness, fear, conflict—without descending into plotless maundering...

Holy hotcakes, Batman! Check out the Great Stuff we’ve got today! The first three posts qualify as Extra-Great Stuff in my mind, and the others are none too shabby themselves. Check ‘em out.

CRAFT

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s excellent Your Story Opening: Shock vs. Seduction on Jane Friedman’s blog opens today’s Great Stuff, and what an opening it is. This excerpt from her book Fine-Tuning Fiction actually starts with a brief discussion of pace and who drives it—antagonist early, protagonist later—then gets into those two types of openings. The shock opening grabs the reader’s interest and attention right away...

Primarily a business focus in today’s articles but Kristen Lamb’s funny piece on not being a social media tools tool is a nice counterpoint.

CRAFT

James Scott Bell’s (@jamesscottbell) The Perils of Pure Pantsing on The Kill Zone could also be titled “In Praise of Structure.” Note that that’s structure with a u, not stricture with an i. Late in the post, Bell writes that structure “helps readers feel what you want them to feel” (italics his). I compare structure to the bare scaffold of a building. It defines the general shape but says nothing about where the doors and windows will be, the number, shape, or size of the rooms, or what the exterior will look like. That’s where the architect’s art comes in...