PETER CUMMING'S TOP TEN LIST OF WRITING TIPS

Lajos Egri: "Whenever you have a fully developed human being who wants something badly, you have a story" (play).

Ideas are all around you—write through your eyes, ears, nose, mouth, your whole body, motion, feelings—physical, emotional, spiritual . . . everything you are.

By tapping into your memory and experience, your writing will be different from anyone else's writing on the planet.

The scariest and most exciting thing in the world is a blank piece of paper. We write to find out what we think—not the other way around.

Titles—should both inform and intrigue.

Beginnings—begin in the middle and not before.

Characters—let your characters surprise you; let your characters take over your story; let your characters do the talking.

Action—show, don't tell. Don't do all the work for your readers.

Endings—leave readers with a question, an exclamation, a feeling of wholeness or disturbance, but never simply die out.

Writing matters: Emerson writes, "Cut these words and they would bleed."

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