Musings Of A New Southern Man

I can't finish any commentary on my time as the editor of YourHub at The Denver Post without mentioning Kevin Vaughan. Those who watch Fox Sports these days see Kevin as a reporter who covers the big stories, most notably the Aaron Hernandez murder trial. But I knew him as the trusted supervisor who took YourHub under his wing. Kevin was my go-to guy when I needed to discuss ideas and problems. He had the managerial experience to know the tricky parts of leading people, everything from story creation and execution to personnel matters. I made sure to include Vaughan on any email I sent that involved my plans for the future of YourHub. Vaughan's involvement with YourHub began when he was still at the Rocky Mountain News, which was where YourHub got its start. He was very interested in the concept of hyperlocal news, and he played a part in making that idea work from the earliest days of YourHub. Vaughan and YourHub were brought on board by The Post after the Rocky ceased ope...

I was delusional when I started writing novels. I figured that because I could write good stories for journalism that I could take those lessons and make an easy transition to being a novelist who specializes in fiction. That didn't work. I knew how to write plot, but I suffered when it came to building character. I am refining that part of my abilities. Still, there are lessons from journalism that translate well to writing novels. Here are a few: 1. Be concise. A journalist takes a large volume of information and puts it into a compact package. Newspaper articles are 10 inches long, and a feature story can be 25 inches. Anything longer than that is rare. But that training in writing tight works well in crafting novels. 2. Edit tight. This is rule 1A in being concise. Even my journalism training didn't limit me to using just the words I needed to build a scene. I trimmed words and sentences that were extraneous on my first reading of my completed first draft, and I trimm...