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Intimacy and romance are not synonymous.

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To see the years touch ye gives me joy", he whispered, "for it means that ye live.

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One dictum I had learned on the battlefields of France in a far distant war: You cannot save the world, but you might save the man in front of you, if...more

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Conflict and character are the heart of good fiction, and good mystery has both of those in spades.

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I thought the force of my wanting must wake ye, surely. And then ye did come. . ." He stopped, looking at me with eyes gone soft and dark. "Christ, Cl...more

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Why?" I shrieked, hitting him again and again, and again, the sound of the blows thudding against his chest. "Why, why why!".Because I was afraid!" He...more

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But it wouldn’t have half the power of a story in which Jamie and Claire truly conquer real evil and thus show what real love is. Real love has real c...more

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You don’t need to know the purpose as you write, but when you read over something you’ve written, you should be able to point to any given element—be ...more

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Dialogue doesn’t take place in a vacuum. Dialogue is contradictory, in that it can either speed up or slow down a passage.

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You want to anchor the scene with physical details, but by and large it’s better to use sensual details rather than overtly sexual ones.

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Okay. This has to be a credible threat. Ergo, we have to have seen (and heard about) the real damage Randall has done to Jamie thus far; we have to be...more

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Pointing out the emotion in a scene is like laughing at your own jokes.

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Watch a good movie sometime without reference to what’s happening but only with attention to how it was photographed; you’ll see the change of focus—z...more

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Don’t let characters talk pointlessly—they only talk if there’s something to say.

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As a rule of thumb, four consecutive lines of dialogue is about as much as you want to have without a tag.