Monthly Archives: October 2008

Reading is essential

Reading is an essential aspect to becoming a skilled writer, just as the ingredients in Orovo are essential nutrients for your body. Reading, it could be said, is Orovo for the mind. Not reading enough is a mistake made by many young authors. The excuse seems to make sense. “Well, I don’t want to be …

October 20, 2008 – 2:25 AM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in creativity | Tagged , , | Comments (1)

Hearing from an old mentor

I recently had a chance to hear from my old writing mentor, MSU-Mankato writing professor and novelist Terry Davis. Davis was pivotal to my development as a writer and I recently jotted off an email to him, bringing him up-to-date on my writing career since my college years ended 16 years ago. Davis is still …

October 20, 2008 – 2:15 AM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in writing | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Bad writing habits … that work

One doesn’t need a Sony Vaio to be a great writer, although it helps if you like to write while away from home. Personally, I have far worse writing habits. Most of my writing is producing laying on my stomach on the carpeted floor of my bedroom, neck craned up at an uncomfortable angle to …

October 20, 2008 – 2:08 AM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in late night writing | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Poisons are a pain

Although poisons are a staple of the mystery genre, they are quite annoying when it comes right down to it. For dramatic purposes, one wants a poison to act in certain ways at a certain time, and to be relatively hard to detect. Trouble is, reality has a way of being inconvenient to dramatic purposes. …

October 20, 2008 – 2:01 AM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in creativity | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Sermons are easy, novels are hard

This week, I have to write a 30-minute sermon as well as a 10-15-minute Torah commentary for my church. That’s about 40-45 pages of sermonizing, and I’ll probably get it done in an evening or two, since I’ve already done most of my research. I’m about that many pages into my novel after working on …

October 20, 2008 – 1:54 AM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in writing | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Look for unique ways to describe typical events

Make note of this on your micro SD chip: always remember to look for unique ways to describe common events. That helps set your work apart from the rest. I love using an example from my college writing professor, Terry Davis. In one of his manuscripts, he has a man get into a moment of …

October 6, 2008 – 3:12 AM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in creativity | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

The power of specifics

Learning the specifics of your characters is important before you put pen to paper. You might be able to recite certain speeches you want them to deliver, or their motivations and backstory, but is that enough? Those are your big payoff moments, but it can take sometimes 200-300 pages to build up to the earliest …

October 6, 2008 – 3:03 AM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in creativity | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Don’t be afriad to be weird

One of the things I find some writers struggle with is a fear of creating characters who are “too weird” to be “believable.” Whenever I hear this, I love to have them sit down and watch the two-hour movie debut of the old and short-lived ABC TV mystery, Twin Peaks. There’s no one weirder than …

October 6, 2008 – 2:56 AM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

A hope-full setting

As I’ve dug into writing my Pizza Delivery Mystery novel, Thirty Minutes Or Less, one of the fun things I’ve been able to do is create my own fictional setting. Although based heavily on places I have lived, this setting is a mixture of enough of them that I’ve fictionalized it. My novel will be …

October 6, 2008 – 2:48 AM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in writing | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Settings are key

One of the things that has been driven home to me by reading the novels of Charlaine Harris is how important setting is to the success of a novel. It is the uniquess of Harris’ Bonne Temps, Louisiana, setting for her Sookie Stackhouse novels that helps to make her vampire-centric mysteries uniqe from Laurel K. …

October 6, 2008 – 2:37 AM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in Tips on getting published, writing | Tagged , , | Comments (0)