Esmeralda Stone

writing-tips

  • Anyone looking at ProWritingAid?

    This is just a quick post to let anyone out there know that ProWritingAid’s Black Friday sale is going on now and lasts for another thirteen days. $199 (regularly $399) for the lifetime premium program and an even more exuberant price for the premium pro program. Am I getting something from ProWritingAid for letting you

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  • Do You Want To Build A… Wait? What Did I Change It To?

    November 9th, and we have our first real snow on the property. We had some weird sleety stuff the other day that was more of a rain. But this morning, we have snow accumulating on the ground. Why is the picture weird? Well, I took it through the door of my office, so you can

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  • When They Have Nothing To Do, Make Them Bake Cake!

    A discussion I recently had with a reader—okay, it was with my husband—was about why my characters do so much cooking and baking in my books. I have a few reasons for this. The main one being I’ve always enjoyed reading books that involve food. Jennifer Crusie’s Bet Me and Agnes and the Hitman are

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  • Killing Your Darlings And Their Cousin…

    A well-known piece of writing advice from Stephen King is ‘kill your darlings.’ What does this mean? It means after you’ve spent hours creating the most perfect scene (or paragraph) with witty dialogue, intriguing action, and immense tension, only to find out it does nothing to move the story forward—you kill it. Delete it. Erase

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  • Eeeek!! I Saw Something I Wish I could Unsee!

    I did it. I folded, and I looked, and I’m (a little) horrified. I’m of course talking about my word count for Lasting Remains. We traveled in August, and I compiled what I’d written of Lasting Remains into a Word doc and emailed it to myself. You know, just in case there was some weird

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