Saints and Martyrs

Let’s suppose I was going to tell you a story and I started off , “I’m going to tell you the story of my Aunt Agatha. That woman was a saint! She got up every morning at 6 am, made breakfast for her family, worked at her job all day, kept the cleanest house in [...]

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Come closer

“The man was tall and slim and walked with a limp. He had been hit by a car when he was a teenager and the orthopedic specialist had said that the bones in that leg would always be shorter than those in the other leg.” 45 words
“John limped to his car. As always, he tried [...]

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Make your characters work for you

I sat in the coffee shop this morning looking around at the regulars and thinking of them as characters in a story. There’s the older man, white-haired, neatly dressed who always reads the national newspaper, the middle aged man in a wheelchair, who tries to play Joe Cool with the baristas, and the baristas who [...]

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Establishing character

Pull your listener or reader in with a quick, one-sentence description of the main character. A brief thumbnail sketch will do the job for you. Try for a sentence that packs a one, two, three punch. Think of three relevant characteristics, if possible with the third being very unlike the first two.

“He was a [...]

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Making a story come alive

The closer your reader feels to the story, the more deeply they will listen – and pick up the message behind it – the message you’re trying to get across. Suppose your message is “You should listen carefully to what other people are telling you.”
The ‘You should’ is going to put people off right away. [...]

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