See the thing is, I don't really treat letters any differently than carving any other shape. Everything that gets carved is either a straight or curvy line, a dot, or a hollow space - in varying sizes.

Here are some generic tips from one of my classes (gouge cutting) if this helps, these are just my opinions or ideas I've gathered up that I like, to each their own ;)

• The first cut you make in a non-carved area will be the best cut, because the knife is held securely, with material inside and outside both edges of the nib. It holds the blade steady for a nice stable cut. Because of this, try not to cut "a little on the safe side" with the intention of coming back and trimming closer later.

• If parts of the image are hollow, carve the inside spaces first, so if you cut into the outline by accident, you can re-draw it.

• Try to use depth control to make a line go from wide to narrow or to carve small triangular spaces, so you can do more with each cut and not have to go back and shave small areas later.

• Do most complex area first; if it doesn't work you will have saved time, effort, & material

• To carve a sharp 90 degree corner: (1) carve a stroke along the inside edge of the corner going towards the corner, stop at the corner and back the blade out without removing the material (2) do the same along the other inside edge, when you reach the corner and lift it will remove the both pieces of material and leave a sharp corner.

• If a particular area of the carve looks challenging, do extra transfers of it onto scrap. Then you can practice the tricky spot as often as you want before trying that part of the carve into your actual piece. I use a heat transfer method, and I can get about 4-5 transfers from one photocopied image (maybe more, I haven't tried). So I transfer the full image first, set that aside, then cut the tricky part out of the transfer paper and transfer just that area a few more times onto scrap.