Romance and the Language of Consent
I’m proud to write romance, so it’s no surprise that the #MeToo movement has prompted a lot of thoughts in me about the role of the romance genre in women’s lives.
Pin ItWriting 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.
Pin ItBranding 101: What’s the Voice of Your Brand?
There’s no “always right” approach to our brand’s voice. The traditional advice is to avoid talking about religion or politics, but in a politicized world, should our personal beliefs play a role in our brand or not?
Pin ItWriting Styles: Transitioning from Nonfiction to Fiction — Guest: Elizabeth Randolph
Just because we’re skilled at nonfiction writing doesn’t mean we’re skilled at storytelling (or vice versa). To do both, we might have to unlearn a lot of what we’ve learned about writing. Today, Elizabeth Randolph shares her insights on changing writing styles.
Pin ItTapping into Strong Emotions with Memories
Our readers often want an emotional connection to our story and characters, but sometimes we struggle to explore deep emotions in our stories. Luckily, our lifetime of memories is the perfect repository of emotions for us to mine.
Pin ItWhat to Write Next: Playing Favorites
The vast majority of us will write more than one story during our life, so at some point in our career, we’ll have to decide what we’re going to write next. The question then becomes, how do we decide?
Pin ItCalling All Scrivener-Using Over Achievers!
Many of my most popular posts share tools I’ve developed to help writers. By request, here’s a Scrivener template for my Master Beat Sheet, which combines the Save the Cat Beat Sheet and my Story Engineering Beat Sheet.
Pin ItHappy New Year! Time to Leave Guilt Behind…
This time of year is ripe for wrap-ups of what we accomplished over the previous year. However, it’s easy to reach the end of 2017 and feel like a failure for not accomplishing enough or not reaching a certain goal or milestone.
Pin ItAuthor Marketing: Insights and Ideas for Local Promotion — Guest: Elizabeth Randolph
We often hear advice about online marketing, but we shouldn’t forget local opportunities. Elizabeth Randolph is here to give her unvarnished look at a few local promotion options—what worked, what didn’t, and what she wants to try in the future.
Pin ItStorytelling: It’s about Going Primal — Guest: Elizabeth Randolph
When we first start writing, we often learn lots of new “rules,” which can narrow our focus onto writing craft so much that we lose sight of storytelling. How can we regain that storytelling mindset?
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