Writing Tips from Mark

Hi everyone,  Below, you'll find a video showing how easy it is to use Grammarly to fix errors in your stories. Grammarly won't find all your errors, but it will find a lot.  I use Grammarly on every chapter when I'm writing. When I've finished my book, and I've gone...

Describe your character while keeping the story moving It’s important to describe your character so that the reader can clearly imagine them in their minds, but also imagine all the other characters and keep them separate. I hate it when characters have similar names...

Many writers get frustrated when they start a story, because they start out strong with a good idea, but then kinda run out of gas, because the ideas sorta vanish . . . right? Has that happened to you. Well, it happens to me a lot, and it’s super frustrating. So...

How do I make my story longer?So, there I was, minding my own business and writing my story when, all of a sudden . . . I ran out of ideas? I didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t really writer’s block, it was that I reached the ending before anything really interesting...

      While attending a writer’s conference last year, I was introduced to the idea of writing about the physical effects of emotion on a character. In most of my Minecraft-inspired novels, I’d say, “Gameknight was overwhelmed with fear.” Or “Fear...

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I approach my story planning. In the last couple of books, I’ve focused on designing the character first, but using opposite characteristics to make the character or environment more interesting. In The Giant’s Giant, I made a...

In stories, the opening scene is super important. It must capture the attention of the reader like a constricting snake and refuse to let go. This scene must make the reader say to himself/herself “Wow, that’s really interesting; I wonder what’s going to happen next?”...

Recently, when I start thinking about a new story, I find myself really focusing on the character and their flaw. Character flaw – Every hero must have some kind of flaw to them. They can’t be perfect, and they can’t be totally despicable. We want the reader to root...

When I first started writing, I did a terrible job with the two topics of this post: echoing and character names. This is a problem I see in many young writers as well as some older, inexperienced writers like I was a few years ago. Echoing is the use of words...

  The Dark Night of the Soul (DNofS) is likely one of the most important parts of your plot and deserves significant attention when you are developing your story. Let me try to define what it is, or at least how I use it. Dark Night of the Soul: This is a scene in the...

Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___. The above paragraph is referred to as Pixar’s Rule #4. A Pixar storyboard artist, Emma Coats, @lawnrocket, compiled a list story wisdom she...

I’ve been working on my next book, called The Giant’s Giant, and I’ve had a lot of trouble getting it going. For some reason, I start writing a couple of chapters, then get stuck and don’t know where the story is going. I start over, and again I’ve gotten stuck. It’s...

  As those of you who read my Minecraft-inspired novels know, battle scenes are a big part of my stories. In my earlier books, I really didn't understand the purpose of the battle, other than to raise tension, but over the years, I've realized that battle scenes...

  Hi everyone. I wanted to talk with you about something I've slowly been learning and getting better at, I think, as I write more books, and that's sentence structure. When I go back and look at my very first books, all of which you can no longer find online. ...

  There's a rule in writing, and of course, whenever I say there's a rule, I'll think of multiple ways of breaking it, but so far, I've never broken this rule, and it goes like this: Rule #10: If your hero needs a gun at the end of the story - You must show that...

I wanted to share some of the things I've learned when it comes to writing exciting and engaging dialogue. In some of my first novels, my dialogue was compared to a microwave burrito (not my best review, but one of my favorites). After receiving that rebuke, I started...

  Learning how to show your story to your reader, rather than telling them about it is difficult. I struggle with this in every book I write, because telling is easy and showing is hard. Sometimes, telling is useful to do in your story. I’ve used it to tell the...

  Plot Questions are an important strategy I use to increase tension in the story and keep the reader turning the page. This is a technique I try to use at the end of every chapter. Sometimes that chapter doesn't need one and I don't use it, but usually, when you...

  I've spoken to a lot of kids about writing over the years, and I've been surprised at how many of you want to write . . . I think that's fantastic, but I've heard a common question from many, "I start writing my story, but it always ends up being only a page or...