Where Normal Need Not Apply
The other week, my friend Janice Hardy emailed me for insight into a question one of her blog readers had about writing contests. She wanted to turn the question into a blog post on the pros and cons of writing contests and thought I might have something to say about the […]
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Most of us suffer from self-doubt in some way. Those of us doing NaNoWriMo might have reached a point in our story where events aren’t playing out as cool as they seemed in our head. Or maybe NaNo’s going great, but we’re not sure we can keep up the quality. […]
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Most tips for creating sympathetic characters point out that our characters need flaws. And that’s very true. But it can be a real trick to show flaws for characters who bottle up their emotions in an attempt to hide their weaknesses. While very common, that defense mechanism can leave very […]
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We’re probably all familiar with the idea that poetry, music, and song lyrics can have rhythm. But prose writing—our normal, everyday writing with sentences and paragraphs rather than lines, stanzas, and verses—can have a rhythm too. I’d occasionally heard a rhythm in my head while reading stories but never paid much attention. […]
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Tomorrow, thousands of writers will start their novel for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I’m not in a good spot in my writing project schedule to participate this year (*pout*), but I’m cheering from the sidelines. (I’m Jami Gold if anyone wants to buddy me.) On this occasion, I wanted […]
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The middle act of our story isn’t about delaying until the “good stuff.” Instead, it should set up obstacles to make the final act more satisfying.
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The Writers Helping Writers Amazing Race is still going strong, where an army of writers are trying to help as many other writers as we can in one week. One category where people can request help is an “Ask Anything” question. Ask anything related to writing and there’s bound to […]
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Remember when I mentioned last week that The Bookshelf Muse had become Writers Helping Writers? And how the phenomenal Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi behind the site had two new books coming out this week: The Positive Trait Thesaurus and The Negative Trait Thesaurus? And how they were going to […]
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Last week, we discussed how we can plan our story and avoid writing a “hot mess.” With NaNoWriMo almost upon us, now is the time to think about basic planning for plot and character arcs so we end up with a coherent story. But what about the writing quality itself? NaNo […]
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Those of you who follow me on Twitter know that I’m always on the lookout for great writing resources. Over three years ago, I discovered one of the best: The Bookshelf Muse, written by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi. They’re also the genius duo behind The Emotion Thesaurus. If you’re not […]
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