Category Archives: The Shea Method

When you’re first writing your book, it’s not going to be great. The first draft is supposed to be bad. Your writer brain and your editor brain can’t exist at the same time, so your editor brain needs to be put on silent while you tell yourself the story. That means that all your charactersContinue reading “A Writing Tip for Doing the Research”

We’ve all heard that dreaded term “character development,” but how do you actually go about achieving that? Well first, you need to intimately understand your characters. In building your character arcs, you’ll need to be able to answer the three most important questions: What do they want? How far will they go to get it?Continue reading “A Writing Tip for Crafting Character Arcs”

Dialogue makes or breaks the book. A well-written scene with carefully crafted dialogue entices the reader further. It gives insight into the characters by showing, not telling. It makes the characters come alive, jump off the page. An otherwise well-written scene with awkward or stiff dialogue loses the reader. It distances the reader from theContinue reading “A Writing Tip for Crafting Dialogue”

To better understand your characters, you need to know who’s in your story and how often they appear. Taking one character at a time, place their name in the search bar of your document. I would start with a character whose name never changes (no nicknames or titles). Start by tracking the character visually basedContinue reading “A Writing Tip to Understand your Characters”

What’s your current daydream? Chances are it’s to own your own bookstore or coffee shop. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been talking to friends when the conversation inevitably turns to the subject. Eyes become downturned, smiles attempt to be hidden but break through, voice gets quiet and sheepish, but yet we agree,Continue reading “A Writing Tip to Catch that Daydream”

“There is in each of us an upwelling spring of life, energy, love, whatever you like to call it. If a course is not cut for it, it turns the ground around it into a swamp.” -Mark Rutherford “What is upwelling in you?…Stories, articles, poems, songs, and screenplays—to name only a few forms—are reliable containersContinue reading “A Writing Tip to Find your Footing”

Writing effective character development requires that you answer two basic questions:· What does your character care about most in the world? · How can you take it away from her? Most of us go head-first into writing without knowing the answers. And that’s okay. As we discussed in “A Writing Tip on How to WriteContinue reading “A Writing Tip to Care about your Characters”

We know the power of a name from Shakespeare. As Juliet says: “’Tis but thy name that is my enemy; Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man. O, be some other name! What’s in aContinue reading “A Writing Tip to Explore What’s in a Name”

When I first sat down to write Dance With Me, I had no idea what I was doing. I had a short story of about 8-10 pages that I knew I wanted to extend into a full-length novel, and that was it. So I started writing. 100,000 words later, I had my first draft thatContinue reading “A Writing Tip on How to Write a Novel”

My dystopian zombie novel, Camellias and Oats, began from a single line. I was working out of a book of writing exercises* and this one prompted me to write a list of “best first lines.” Here’s some of what I came up with: “If red was the color of love, what color was left behindContinue reading “A Writing Tip to Tell it Backwards”