Enter the Dragon: The Art of Beating the Sh*t Out of Your Characters

My toddlers and I love using our imaginations when playing with Little People action figures and Beanie Babies. However, I think my five-year-old has more fun messing with the carefully created plots that I craft for our playtime. For example, I enjoy the mundane story with generic problems while playing with my kiddos. It's typically …

Murdering Your Darlings Is Not Enough

     According to Rob Parnell, (http://www.easywaytowrite.com/ArtMurder.html), “Murder your darlings” was a phrase first coined by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (or Fitzgerald or Faulkner or Nabakov or even Stephen King, depending on who you believe). I once saw this phrase in sticker form years ago on a fellow writer’s binder. She was a delightful young lady with …