This piece from @Janice_Hardy echoes some of the best advice I’ve ever heard: Start with conflict, not crisis. How people deal with a crisis is much more interesting than the crisis itself.
Apropos though of making sure *something* is “happening,” Hardy is right on that as well. In my experience as a reader it takes special genius to create a character so interesting I’ll listen to him or her THINK for pages and pages. As a mortal, I’ve found that setting up the story conflict in a scene built around the central characters gets me into the story so much more effectively. I’ve also learned that any introspective scene that goes on for more than a page–or even half a page–needs some other character to jump in and interrupt it.
So check out Hardy’s advice here. I think it’s spot on.
on Fiction University:
Sometimes really great advice is anything but helpful.
If I took a poll for the most common writing advice, “start with the action” would make the list.Which it should, as it’s great advice. But it’s also like saying, “show, don’t tell.” We know we ought to do it, but we don’t always know how, and those four words don’t help us with the beginnings of our novels.
This can be especially hard on new writers, because they might think they’re doing everything right, but still get negative feedback or even rejections on their manuscripts. “I do start with action,” they cry. “Can’t you see that car barreling off that cliff there? What do I have to do, blow up a planet?”
Well, no.
Maybe it’s the movie industry and all those summer blockbusters, but say “action scene” and most people envision something Michael Bay-ish—car chases…
View original post 75 more words
It’s hard to see the flaws in our own work, and the ending is especially a problem. We know ourselves how it’s supposed to pack its punch, or we hope we do, but will the reader?
This article from Writers Helping Writers by 
I don’t want to preface this post with an extended essay on my own consciousness—there are probably better places for that, if it needs to be written at all—but I do want to say that when I wrote the novels that were published in the 1980s, I was massively ignorant and insensitive (though perhaps not insensitive enough to commit most of the more egregious mistakes). When I returned to these books to self-publish them, I reread them with more awareness and indeed made some changes, so that I hope people buying my two republished books purchase those and not the earlier versions (this is truer of Blood Lies than of King of the Roses, although I still sometimes consider further edits of that book).
on Anne R Allen site:
I’ve often found great advice on Anne’s site. This post about 
Something’s going to change before the end of the story. You can’t write your final outline entry without knowing what that something is.
Dangerous? Oh, my lord, yes. It takes much longer. It tempts complication, which can be a storyteller’s bane.
I’m back from knee surgery and scanning my blogs. Not surprisingly, here’s a keeper. Chuck is a lively writer, so there may be some bad words. Well worth it. Here he tells us what I had to learn the hard way; that 
Just Can't Help Writing 