A Black Moment is an event in our story that steals the protagonist’s hope for a solution. However, some stories don’t make sense with a typical catastrophe for a Black Moment. How can we give them a Black Moment that will work?
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Writers are often a neurotic, self-doubting lot, so many of us long for validation. However, any validation is only temporary, and the best we can do is try to develop a healthy relationship with those desires.
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Not sure what parallelism means in our sentence structures? From lists and comparisons to using rhetorical devices, improving this skill helps strengthen our writing.
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I’ve said before that line editing is the hardest type of editing to nail down. We can say that line editing is about how we write scenes and paragraphs, but what does that mean? What does line editing encompass?
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Because our themes live in the subtext, it’s easy to create unintended themes that undermine our intended theme. That risk increases if we’re trying to create success themes but our story has a bittersweet ending.
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At some point in our editing process, we usually have to get nitpicky about our word choices because the right words often don’t come out in the first draft. This step can be tedious but oh-so-important for strengthening our writing and improving our story’s pace.
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It’s time for another post as a Resident Writing Coach over at Writers Helping Writers, and this time we’re talking about how to find and fix the mixed messages undermining our story’s themes.
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Characters inhabit every story, and yet we might not have thought deeply about what they are, what they mean for our story, and how we can use that knowledge to create characterization. Today, author Damon Suede shares his insights.
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Sometimes books don’t earn a “perfect” review because of minor problems. Let’s talk about some of the small issues that might hold back our work from being as good—or as great—as it could be.
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As part of last week’s giveaway, I added several suggestions to the Writing Craft Master Lists, but before I announce the winner, let’s share our favorite writing resources.
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