Category: Authors’ Tips – A to Z of Writing

#WritingTips – He said, she said: Revisiting #DialogueTags

Posted on by Reet Singh

I’m revisiting Dialogue Tags. What are they?

If my book characters say something, how will readers know who spoke?
How will they know who said what when they can’t physically see or hear the characters?

Through dialogue tags, that’s how. Dialogue tags are phrases or sentences that tie or tag a character to a particular dialogue.

Consider this conversation (Example A):
‘What on earth are you doing?’
‘How is it any of your bloody business what I do?’
‘It is my bloody business because this is my bloody house!’

Flashback in Fiction

Posted on by Reet Singh

What is a flashback?
It is a scene narrated in the present timeline but it pertains to something that happened in the past – something that took place before the current story starts.
A flashback refers to an event so compelling and powerful that it sits in the character’s memory – and it has contributed to make the character who she is.
How can you tell if your story needs a flashback?

Adding a dash of humor to your writing

Posted on by Reet Singh

This is an old one where I talk about adding humor to your writing.

I can’t write a blog on humor with mentioning my favorite author.

“If you take life fairly easily, then you take a humorous view of things. …making the thing a sort of musical comedy without music, and ignoring real life altogether.”
PG Wodehouse

PG Wodehouse’s comic genius is something to aspire to; however, not all of us write comedies. What, then, is the point of adding a comic touch to our writing? Indeed, in that case, what is the purpose of this blog?

Word counts that work

Posted on by Reet Singh

This week I’m going to talk about word counts and what they could mean to you as a reader and as a writer.

What word count can mean to a reader:
How long is this story? Do I really want to read such a short/long story? Some like it long – they feel cheated by shorts and novellas; others want to get through a book in one night, or on the train ride home, so they shudder at epic word counts.

For authors, though, word counts can mean two things:

Writers’ Ten Commandments

Posted on by Reet Singh

This week, suspense author Ravi Bedi visits my blog to talk about things that should be included in the list of a writer’s TEN Commandments:

Semicolons, Em-dashes, and Ellipses

Posted on by Reet Singh

This week I’m going to talk about some interesting punctuation marks that you should certainly try in your writing.

First, I’m going to define what a clause is, because we’ll be talking about it a lot in the following section.

A clause is a group of words – it forms part of a sentence AND contains a subject and a verb.

For example: Tanay stepped into the en-suite bathroom and began to look for a shaving kit.

Point of View in story-telling

Posted on by Reet Singh

When it refers to real life, a Point of View is the “position from which something is viewed”. In story-telling, it translates into “who is telling the story?”Whose viewpoint is it? How much of it is biased because it is only one point of view? How much can a reader believe if it is coming from one ‘position’ only?Let me try and answer these questions.

Midpoints that impel the story onwards

Posted on by Reet Singh

This week I’m going to talk about how to write a midpoint that keeps the reader turning the pages.As the word suggests, the midpoint of a story comes right at the center of it.How should it be written?Why should we care?Regardless of what genre we write, the first quarter of the story is invariably where the characters are introduced to the reader and where the events that complicate the main characters’ lives take place.This part is the set-up to the second quarter of the story which highlights how the characters react to the life-altering events (job offer, job loss, tragedy, natural disaster, unexpected inheritance) that beset them.Their reactions drive the story forward – if they don’t react, there will be no story.

Writing Love Scenes

Posted on by Reet Singh

When there’s a romance brewing between two characters in a story, even in genres other than romantic fiction, readers will want the characters to, at the very least, kiss.

When I’m reading, I know that I always want that to happen – and I feel let down when a story with a promising slow-sizzle ends without a physically sensual moment. I’m sure the protagonists feel cheated too.

Killing your readers – or, How NOT to write!

Posted on by Reet Singh

Have you heard of the Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest?
It has been around since 1982 and it connotes a very intriguing challenge – participants must write an “atrocious opening sentence to a hypothetical bad novel” and the most atrocious entry wins a prize every year.