Throwback Thursday | The Enneagram for Christian Writers

Over the last few years, I have seen more and more questions referring to the Enneagram. It’s yet another in a long line of personality assessment tools designed to help people understand themselves and others better. I’ve recently read two books on the Enneagram. One has a lot of applications for Christian writers, regardless of …

Writers Life | Using Cinematic Techniques as You Write

Most writers have a collection of books on the writing craft. A few are treasures, filled with gems of writerly wisdom that had a profound impact on how we write or market our books. Some are valuable tools with lists and instructions that make our writing task easier. Others are somewhat helpful, containing the occasional …

Regardless of Genre, We’re All World-Builders

When you see a post about world-building by an author, what comes to mind? Fantasy? Science fiction? Dystopian? We’d all agree creators of these kinds of stories build fictional worlds very different from “real life.” It’s the quality of their world-building that makes what might seem unlikely feel believable as we read. Every author is …

Book Review | Hook Your Readers by Tamar Sloan

Tamar Sloan is an Australian psychologist and author who has combined her talents to write this book. In it, she explains the importance of story to the human psyche (which Lisa Cron also addresses in Wired for Story), and discusses the key psychological components that make a book compelling. Sloan starts with the 1944 Heider …

The Decision Tree of Plotting

Have you ever read a book and been unhappy with one or more of the choices the author made? How could Bailey Flanigan marry that guy instead of the other one I was cheering for? How could Lucy Maud Montgomery kill off that character at the end of Anne of Green Gables? Actually, I read …

Book Review | Write Better by Andrew T LePeau

Write Better had some ideas I disliked or disagreed with. Le Peau even appeared to contradict himself on a couple of points. But it’s definitely a book worth reading, because the good far outweighs the less good. I found three main faults with the book. First, Le Peau points out the importance of a great …

Ways to Lose a Reader

I first wrote this article a couple of years ago about ways to lose a reader. It came about due to chats with other readers. Its a good reminder for today as authors rely on readers. This post has been revised due to some of it being out dated. This post first came about because …

The big lesson in being a debut novelist

My debut novel launched yesterday. Among the tears, excitement, nerves and sense of satisfaction was a lesson that I’ve learned over the nine months it’s taken The Baggage Handler to go from Word document stored on my computer to an actual book I can hold in my hands. This is the lesson: how to balance …

ACW Writing Resources

Writing Resources for Australasian Christian Writers (ACW): Book Publishing Book Marketing Writing Craft Omega Writers One of the logistical challenges we’ve encountered in moving a five year old group blog to a new platform is how to connect the archived posts from the old site. We didn’t want to lose access to the wealth of …