This is K.M. Wyland and you are listening to the my work. But my goal this year is to slow down a little bit and take some extra time on a routine

basis to smell the roses and refill my inspiration tank. I'm planning to dedicate one full day a week just a fiction and take another

day away from business stuff to focus on odds and ends like grocery shopping, studying foreign

languages just for fun, enjoying the outdoors, and just dream zoning.

I'm not big on New Year's goals since I believe goals should be implemented whenever they become necessary, but I do love how the turn of the year

always seems to inspire us to re-evaluate our lives and make adjustments as necessary.

So here's to a 2015 full of novel writing and dream zoning

as well as you know all that fun blogging

podcasting and vlogging stuff.

The latest post in the video series on my blog is I just figured out what all my favorite stories

have in common and it blew my mind. It talks about the secret ingredient that can take even

mediocre ideas and turn them into your reader's favorite five-star stories.

To find the post, visit my site at helping writers become

authors.com. And now I hope you enjoyed this week's podcast entitled

Get Rid of on-the-nose dialogue once and for all. and writers, subtlety, and subtext. This is true in absolutely every area of storytelling,

from narrative to plotting to character development, but the lack of subtlety and subtext is perhaps nowhere more obvious

than in dialogue. I'm talking, of course, about on-the-nose dialogue.

When I pick up a potential read and skim through its opening paragraphs to discover

whether or not the book will peak my interest,

one of the first things I look at is the dialogue.

If it's on the nose, I'm out of there. Why? Because if the author is

giving me on the nose dialogue, then it's a sure bet he's not going to be able to give me the other subtleties

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