Author: Tim Chapman

This author has written 5 articles
Read more about the article Tim Chapman says, Read My Shorts

Tim Chapman says, Read My Shorts

Tim Chapman is the author of A Trace of Gold. You can find out more about him here, see his books here, and read his latest post here. Who Took My Shorts?          I love short stories. I read them. I write them. I listen to them in the car and at the gym. There’s been talk in literary circles of late that short stories are making a comeback. With publishers tossing 600-page door stops at readers and being reluctant to gamble on single-author collections and anthologies it looked for a while like short stories were in decline. Magazines devoted…

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Read more about the article Tim Chapman Says Don’t Write Drunk

Tim Chapman Says Don’t Write Drunk

Tim Chapman is a former forensic scientist, English teacher, and martial arts instructor. You can read more about him here, see his books here, and read his last post here. Not long ago, I was asked by the Mystery Writers of America to yak about the writing advice I’ve received over the years from professors and fellow authors. In thinking about it, I realized I’ve received LOTS of advice—some useful and some, like WRITE DRUNK, EDIT SOBER, not so much. Here are the tips I think are worth sharing. PRACTICE: One of the fiction writing classes I took was an…

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Read more about the article Tim Chapman Says, “Let’s Have Sex (Fictionally)”

Tim Chapman Says, “Let’s Have Sex (Fictionally)”

Tim Chapman is a former forensic scientist for the Chicago Police Department and is the author of A Trace of Gold and The Blue Silence. You can find out more about him here, see his last post here, and get his books here. A few summers ago, at the Printers Row Lit Fest in Chicago, author Clare O’Donohue and I gave a talk about writing sex scenes. It was essentially a conversation in which we shared opinions and read the nasty bits from a few famous novels, as well as our own. To prepare, I perused books that contained well-known…

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Read more about the article Tim Chapman Looks at Forensic Science

Tim Chapman Looks at Forensic Science

Former forensic scientist Tim Chapman is the author of two books featuring Sean McKinney. You can read more about him here., and read his previous post on Blackbird Writers here. A Trace of Gold by Tim Chapman “Law is man’s attempt to civilize society. Science is man’s attempt to reveal truth. Forensic science, then, is the intersection of civilization and truth.” —Sean McKinney: “A Trace of Gold” A lofty sentiment from my fictional forensic scientist, but the reality in both fiction and life is closer to the philosophy of Heraclitus (or Patti Smith) who said the only constant is change. Forensic…

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Read more about the article How Much Description is Enough?

How Much Description is Enough?

From Tim Chapman. Read his bio here. Some of the tools writers use to tell stories are Character, Dialogue, Voice, Point of View, Tense, Scene, and Plot. Writers hope their stories are so engaging that readers will be unaware of these tools and unaware of how the writer wrestled with them. My Blackbird peers are well versed in using the seven tools, but I have a question for them and for the readers of our stories—When it comes to setting a scene, how much description is enough? Scene tells us Who, What, Where and When. It’s the same sort of…

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