tension

Why Is Storytelling Ability So Important?

April 30, 2013 Writing Stuff
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What makes some poorly written books fall flat on their face while others succeed despite their flaws? One common answer is “storytelling ability.” But what is storytelling? The concept can seem vague and immeasurable—rather like “voice.” A recent experience with two poorly written books gave me insight into how a deeply flawed story can still [...]

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What Soap Operas Can Teach Us about Writing

April 23, 2013 Writing Stuff
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I don’t watch soap operas, but a bizarre conversation tangent (in other words, a perfectly normal conversation for me) triggered my thoughts comparing soap operas to novels. On the surface, they seem very similar. They both have characters, tension, and conflict. However, the more I thought about it, the more I saw differences. And those [...]

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Four Tips for Fixing the Infamous “Info Dump”

December 27, 2012 Writing Stuff
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While I’m on holiday vacation this week, I’ll share a post from my early days of blogging. We’ve all heard of those eye-rolling, telling “information dumps,” yet at some point, we all have to get chunks of information across to the reader. My usual technique with world-building is to show, show, show, but sometimes that’s [...]

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NaNo Prep: Using Music to Get into a Writing Mood

October 23, 2012 Writing Stuff
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Last time, we shared suggestions on how to kick our muse into gear. One of my favorite techniques is using music. With NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month—challenge yourself to write 50K words during November) fast approaching, now is the perfect time to revisit all the ways music can help our writing. On a day-to-day basis, music—er, [...]

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Michael Hauge’s Workshop: Combining Emotional Journeys and External Plots

August 21, 2012 Writing Stuff
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Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been sharing tips from Michael Hauge’s presentation at the Romance Writers of America (RWA) Conference. First we looked at how to make sure our love (or romantic interest) stories didn’t fall prey to a lame “love at first sight” relationship. Then we talked about how to show that our characters really are the [...]

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How to Make the Most of a Scene

June 7, 2012 Writing Stuff
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This post originally ran several months ago at the Girls With Pens blog.  It’s one of my favorites because I’m always looking for checklists to make sure I’m not missing anything while editing and revising.  I hope you find it useful. Whether we plot our stories ahead of time or write by the seat of our [...]

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Does Every Scene Need a Goal?

May 8, 2012 Writing Stuff
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I love when I make my readers think.  Even better is when they turn around and make me think even deeper about an issue.  *smile* Yesterday, K.J. Pugh blogged about my last post (where I talked about cliffhangers and hooks) and brought up the issue of sequels I briefly mentioned.  No, we’re not talking about book [...]

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Cliffhangers: Not Just for the End of a Book

May 3, 2012 Writing Stuff
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Pitches, queries, back cover copy, and full-length stories all have writing techniques in common.  For one thing, they all need a strong opening. We talk about that being a “hook,” something that grabs the reader and pulls them forward to the next line, paragraph, and page. A similar approach works within our stories too.  We might [...]

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Ask Jami: Editing Tips–Tightening Scenes

March 1, 2012 Writing Stuff
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In my post last week asking if we can have too much voice, some great questions came up in the comments.  I decided to turn them into “Ask Jami” blog posts rather than bury the answers in the comment string. Earlier, I shared ideas on how to use color-coding to check if we’re “overusing” a writing element. [...]

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Ask Jami: Editing Tips–How to Use Color-Coding

February 23, 2012 Writing Stuff
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In my last blog post, where I shared the “two-paragraph guideline,” some great questions came up in the comments.  Rather than bury the answers in the comment string, I decided to turn them into “Ask Jami” posts. Today, we’re talking about how to make sure we’re using all the various writing elements.  Next week, I’ll give [...]

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