Writing Prompts: Helpful? Or a Waste of Time? — Guest: Savannah Cordova
Writing prompts can help with inspiration or creativity, or distract us from the writing we’re “supposed to” do. How can we make them more helpful to us?
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Worldbuilding a Series: Writing without a Plan
Some writers plan their worldbuilding details in advance. Others…not so much. How can we worldbuild when we write a series by the seat of our pants?
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Story Revisions: Keeping Track of Changes
Anytime we make a lot of changes to our story, we risk problems, but it helps to track the edits we need to make. How can we organize our revision?
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How Do Pantsers Develop Characters?
Plotters might find any kind of pantsing hard to understand, but even pantsers can struggle with pantsing our characters’ development, as that process comes with a different set of problems from developing our plots.
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Are Sneaky Plot Holes Lurking in Your Story?
It’s time for another post as a Resident Writing Coach over at Writers Helping Writers, and this time we’re talking about plot holes, especially the kind that sneak into our stories.
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Writing Your Worldview: Biases and Beyond
Science can be influenced by societal assumptions, so we certainly can’t keep “social ideas” out of our fiction. Our preferences, biases, beliefs, assumptions, etc. affect everything—whether we recognize them or not.
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Pros & Cons: Referencing the Real World in Our Story
Should we refer to the real world in our fictional story? Let’s take a look at the pros and cons and why we might want to include those references, as well as why we might not.
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Happy New Year! Let’s Talk (Story) Beginnings
We’re almost to the new year, so let’s take those thoughts of new beginnings over to our stories. Most writers have probably struggled with a story’s opening, but if we start from the big picture and move to the specific, we might have an easier time finding the right beginning for our story.
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Writing Diversity: How Can We Avoid Issues?
The real world is filled with diversity, and our stories should be the same way. There’s no “one right way” to portray diverse characters, but there are wrong ways to portray diversity. However, there are steps we can take to minimize—as much as possible—the potential of “getting it wrong.”
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3 1/2 Tips for Fixing an Unlikable Character
In writing, it’s difficult to balance “not enough” and “too much.” Not enough flaws can make our characters flat, and too many flaws can make our characters unlikable. Some genres can get away with unlikable characters, but for those stories that can’t, here are 3 1/2 tips to fix the problem.
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