Where Normal Need Not Apply
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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I’ve been helping Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi at Writers Helping Writers keep a big secret: The Emotion Thesaurus Second Edition! Angela and Becca have added new responses, new entries, and new writing tips.
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A character’s essence is about more than just unique characters, but what is their essence? These 3 perspectives on character essence teach us about our characters.
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Somewhere along our learning curve as writers, we’re likely to come across the skill of layering. Layering can help us create unique characters, no matter how stereotypical or tropey they might be on the surface.
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Traditions are part of our lives, so they should be part of our characters’ lives too. We can add a touch of realism to our stories by including a sense of traditions between characters.
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Just as there are risks to breaking writing rules, there’s risk in emphasizing them too much as well. And what does “strong writing” really mean when it comes to developing our voice?
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Depending on the type of villain in our story, the psychology we use to create our character changes. Kassandra Lamb shares her 8 “do’s and don’ts” to help us create our villains.
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The antagonist in our story might be a love interest or truly evil or anything in between. When our story requires a villain, we might struggle to avoid clichés. Kassandra Lamb shares her insights into psychopaths, sociopaths, and other bad guys.
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A recent Twitter thread brought up problematic reader expectations with story endings. Can we find a balance between “fulfilling our story’s promise and our genre’s expectations” and avoiding a cliché ending?
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When faced with the many decisions of writing our story, the best choice is whatever tells the story we want to tell, but what does that mean? Let’s take a look at what storytelling really is and how we can improve our skills.
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