Interior monologue and how to avoid it.  And more techniques regarding the critical skill of showing rather than telling.  And visits to John Steinbeck and Willa Cather.

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We writers may never know to whom our words will have a profound meaning.  Plus, the importance of cause and effect.  And the perils of interior monologue.

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Should we show friends and family our manuscripts as we compose them?  Good reasons for and against exist.  The key to vivid writing: be specific, definite, and concrete.  Plus, famous romantic lines, avoiding useless analogies, and a technique for vivid writing: using verbs rather than verb objects.

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What should we look for when editing our own manuscript?  How do famous authors do it?  What should we look for as we edit?  This episode discusses the editing process, the good and bad of it.

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Topics of earlier episodes are boiled down to sixteen points, and we'll talk about them briefly.  Also, here are some things we can do to make our sentence-by-sentence writing more pleasing to readers' eyes and ears.

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How can we shake loose from our brains plots for our novels?  Here's my favorite way.  Plus, benefits and perils of writing with a partner.  More on accents.  And avoiding adverbs, which are not a writer's friend.

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Why don't we begin our novel?  Here's a reason, and a way to avoid it.  Plus, we'll talk about qualifiers and intensifiers, the leeches of language.  And some thoughts on profanity and slang.  And why age benefits novelists.

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Many adjective and adverb s do nothing but pad a sentence, making the sentence rickety.  Here are some techniques on avoiding these useless or unintentionally funny modifiers.  Plus, some words are just too much.  We'll avoid these, too.

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In this episode we focus on sentence-by-sentence writing.  How can we make our sentences vivid and powerful?   Some strong techniques are discussed, such as avoiding cliches like the plague.

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Our writing should be a clear window to the story, and a technique is to, in Einstein's phrase, keep it simple but not too simple.  Here are some techniques for doing that, along with a discussion of metaphors and similes.

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