4. Know your characters.
What’s in their wallet? You should know your characters intimately even if you don’t communicate everything that you know about them to your reader.

Create a back story. What is in their wallets? Do they have a lot of credit cards or none? Do they live in an apartment or own a home? Are they neat-freaks? What do they keep in their refrigerator: six packs or soy milk? Are there lots of empty liquor bottles in the garbage can? What’s in the bathroom medicine cabinet? Prescription pills or aspirin? How do they dress? Does he or she date? What about children? Your characters should be dimensional: with lives, personalities and dirty socks.

5. When you’ve hit a wall on a section or character – write a “test chapter”.
This suggestion comes from my friend, Lynn Hightower, a Shamus-award winning writer. I’ve used it many times and it always helps.

Example: you’ve written chapter four using the first person point of view but, in your head, you are hearing a provocative third person voice and you like the way that it sounds. Should you re-write the piece using the third person POV? Split the piece up with a little of each? What to do?

Save the chapter that you’ve written and then write the same chapter using the voice that’s in your head. By the time you’ve finished the exercise, you’ll have a pretty good idea which way you’ll want to go.

6. There are times when the words don’t come, times when the dialogue dries up, the ideas disappear and you couldn’t find a “the” if your life depended on it.
Some people call this “writer’s block” but I think that you need a vacation. Take a walk, go to a movie, get away from the words for awhile and give yourself a break.

The storyteller is TIRED! Refresh your body, your mind and your creative spirit, then return to the words and begin again.