When I attended my first writing conference, I received an amazing piece of advice that has stood me in good stead.

“Write the movie they’ll make from your book.”

This helps with not only positive reinforcement (This book is going to be so good, they’ll make a movie out of it!) but it also keeps you focused on striking the right balance between showing and telling.

If you’ve got a ton of backstory to fill in, your first inclination might be to write five pages of it, but if your reader becomes your movie viewer, you know that watching that on screen would probably be deadly dull. Writing like you’re watching it helps you find where to use narrative vs dialogue, and it can be a really useful tool.

Here’s my for instance: in my book, Someday In Dublin, Michael and Amy meet in a Dublin bar, then strike up a romance. Somewhere along the way, Michael ends up visiting Amy in Pennsylvania and they spend a whirlwind day in Philly. In a movie, this would be a montage of them running up the steps of the art museum like Rocky and shoveling down cheesesteaks and pointing at the Liberty Bell. On paper, it needed a little more fun and heart to paint the picture: Continue reading →