Present Tense or Past Tense? First Person or Third? Which to Use for Your Novel or Memoir

You’re getting ready to write your novel or memoir. How do you decide which tense you should use: past or present? In the case of a novel, you also need to decide whether to write in first person or third. These are common dilemmas and ones worth exploring, because selecting the right tense and point of view from the start will save you getting stuck part-way into the writing, unable to make that choice work for the remainder of your story.

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Do You Torture Your Metaphors? The Problem of Self-Conscious Writing

Do you torture your metaphors, linking unlike things in outrageous comparisons? Do you manufacture odd phrases and invent “words” in an attempt to seem “literary” and “sound like a writer”? If so, you probably don’t even know you are doing this, yet the pretentious writing that results is one of the marks of an amateur writer.

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‘The Dearly Beloved’: A Novel for Troubled Times

The book is a harmonization of opposites–personalities that clash, beliefs that never bend, burdens that never ease. The novel demonstrates the remarkable ability of people to adapt to the most impossible circumstances when love is the driver. There’s no sugar-coating. We get raw, real life here, but a golden light suffuses it.

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The Flattery of Friends Doth Not a Writer Make

I just finished critiquing a story for an aspiring author who was very surprised at the feedback he received. In contacting me, he said he had written several novels he hadn’t yet tried to publish. He wanted to add some polish to one before sending it out to agents, hence his decision to reach out. I read the first chapter, ... Read More