R.L. Herron's Blog, page 2

Why Care About Hooking a Reader?

Photo Courtesy of Pixabay. Seems Like an Easy Question Simply put, if you don’t hook your readers, they won’t get into the story. If readers don’t get into the story, they won’t have a reason to keep reading. No readers? No book sales. No book sales? Goodbye writing career. So, getting it right is an […]

Memoir Anyone?

Another View of the Detroit Skyline One of the first instincts of most authors is to write about what they’ve experienced. That works well, most of the time. However, it’s my guess many readers have little desire right now to read fiction that brings to mind the disturbing reports about the pandemic and national demonstrations. […]

Are You Wandering Aimlessly?

The COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic has been unbelievable on so many levels. From the speed at which it spread, to the closing of borders, schools and universities…and the cancellation of conferences, seminars and businesses in general. It’s been a long, dark road. The discussions about opening up again are all interesting, but they seem to be […]

How Do You Write During a Crisis?

Writing can be lonely work in the best of times. As we’ve entered the national emergency collective state, the news about COVID-19 has become pretty much all anyone can think about. It certainly made concentrating on this blog, not to mention my fiction writing, hard to get started. And then I realized that what I […]

Hard Do You Write During a Crisis?

Writing can be lonely work in the best of times. As we’ve entered the national emergency collective state, the news about COVID-19 has become pretty much all anyone can think about. It certainly made concentrating on this blog, not to mention my fiction writing, hard to get started. And then I realized that what I […]

When Things are Dramatically Complete

Photo: Kromlau Bridge (also known as Devil’s Bridge) in Gablenz, Germany I don’t think anyone would argue writing fiction, whether it’s a novel or a short-story, is a craft. One that requires an adept handling of many elements. But what does adept handling mean? Every author is different, of course. Lately, like a lot of […]

Things That Shouldn’t Surprise You Much About Self-Publishing

Starting off in self-publishing can seem like a perilous journey. I know it did for me. Getting into a new venture is always both exciting and scary, at the same time. Exciting to be doing something new, but scary because you don’t necessarily know what to do first…or even how to sound like you know […]

Do You Write With Feeling?

It almost goes without saying that every person uses themselves as a yardstick to figure out what another person is feeling. This includes readers for your characters in a novel. No matter the situation or genre of your novel or short-story fiction, your reader will try to fill in the blanks about fictional characters based […]

Why Write During the Holidays?

For a long time, I wasn’t a very consistent writer. I figured whenever inspiration struck, I would write. Until then, I preferred to do other things with my time. As a consequence, I didn’t get much better at my craft. However, several years ago, I started forcing myself to write a little every day, and […]

Do You Know the Most Important Thing About Storytelling?

Photo Courtesy of Pexels As I get ready to go full tilt into the holiday season with my family, I thought I’d mention one more time, to every wanna be writer out there, the most important thing I’ve learned about being an author. It’s important to understand there is a difference between a good writer […]