What in the world is MICE? The MICE Quotient is a writing tool introduced by Orson Scott Card ("Ender's Game" Hugo Award-winning Author) in his Characters & Viewpoint (Elements of Fiction Writing) and How to Write Science Fiction. The MICE Quotient tool makes analyzing your writing easy and can help identify and fix issues with a paragraph, a scene, or even a whole story. 

MICE:

• Milieu- stories focused on the setting. Think Lord of the Rings books that spend many pages discussing languages and song.
• Idea - stories focused on answering a question or finding information. Think Mystery stories "Who committed the crime?"
• Character - stories focused on character and how the character changes over the course of the story. Think coming-of-age stories.
• Events - stories focused on an event. Think Apollo 13.

We will go into the MICE Quotient tool in a future blog. Today, we will leave you with this tidbit: Using the MICE Quotient tool to understand what your story is about and then making sure what you are writing in a paragraph or scene drives the story forward. If this tool sounds interesting, see the Amazon Affiliate links below to a couple of outstanding writing books.

We've added one additional topic, Skills, to the MICE list for categorizing our blog posts. For future Writing Tip blog entries, we will put one of these graphics on the blog: 

• M - Milieu -Blog posts that have to do with setting and world-building will use the Milieu graphic.

• I - Idea - Blog posts that have to do with addressing ideas, themes, and plots that are not character or event-related will use the Idea graphic.

• C - Characters - Blog posts that have to do with the people populating your story will use the Character graphic.

• E - Events - Blog posts that have to with events, story arcs, plots, and other items that drive a story forward will use the Event graphic.

• S - Skills - Blog posts that have to do with developing specific writing skills or the general mechanics of writing will use the Skills graphic.

Our intention with the new weekly tip blog posts will be to categorize them into one of the five categories above and dive deeper into the topics from different perspectives. We'll try to provide links to published links and websites where you can dive further into the issues.

There are several editions out there of both these books. I have them both, though not this linked edition. I do highly recommend them if you want to improve your writing skill talent stack.