The Chopping Blog

Our brains are incredibly powerful tools, but they’re like muscles: they only stay strong when we keep using them.

Listen to your characters, follow them, rather than forcing them to follow you. Get to know them and let them tell you what they’re planning rather than the other way around. 

Your characters are, or should be, the ones in the driver’s seat. This is their story.

Put the screen down and time reappears. For writers, that really matters. Thinking needs space. Planning needs quiet. Writing needs attention. Reading needs long stretches without interruption.

Their goal, naturally, is to get money from you. As for your book’s future? They couldn’t care less.  

Don’t be afraid to find out that something isn’t working. It’s rare to stick the landing on your first draft.

In a genre as established as mystery, it’s not easy to do something new.

While most agents and publishers want a first book to stand alone, it’s a bonus if your mystery novel (or any novel) has series potential.

"Long time lurker, first time poster."

"It was her 11th birthday, and the sky had the nerve to be blue."

"The bronchial whining of the elevator always reminds Jonathan of the night he accidentally murdered his father."

If the protagonist is going to succeed, then you want to bring them closer and closer to failure. If they are going to fail, you want to bring them closer and closer to victory.