Writing tips from Nancy Price ’46

Here are two writing tips from Nancy Price ’46, the bestselling author of “Sleeping With the Enemy” and nine other books:

1.

Is that conversation you’ve written so boring—he said, she said—and yet it’s so necessary? Get a scissor and cut it up in sections. Make a sandwich. Between the “he-said-she-said” put tasty fillings. Try some significant actions as the characters talk, or description that in some exciting way makes this conversation mean more. Sometimes another conversation nearby can play off the boring one. Perhaps one speaker is secretly thinking the opposite of what’s being said. Play with it. Be surprised. The child in you knows what it’s doing.

2.

Do you stare in despair at the blank first page of your new novel? Don’t. Find some 4 X 6 cards and begin to put down scenes from the new book that you’ve imagined…characters that have seemed real to you…places you have wanted to describe…conversations you’ve heard in your head…each on a new card. When you have a collection of these, put them on the floor and push them around with your toe. Do some of them seem to clump together and act friendly? Can you imagine putting some new writing between this one and that one? You’re on your way.

Source: nancypricebooks.com