Where Normal Need Not Apply
Our stories consist of many elements—from backstory to dialogue—that each contribute to our story. Yet we can overdo those elements with an information dump. How can we include the different elements while making sure we don’t cross over into Info Dump Land? Let’s talk options…
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Approximately seventy bajillion new books are released every day (give or take a few bajillion). Our newly released books might have a hard time being noticed, so when we find readers who like our work, we want to make sure they’re still in our audience for our next book. Enter the email newsletter.
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When we’re young, the world feels like it’s made up of wrong answers and right answers. Not surprisingly, writing is one of those areas of our life where “one right way” doesn’t apply, and there are several reasons why there’s no definitive “right” way to write a book.
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I started visiting the original The Bookshelf Muse website by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi soon after they started it, and it’s been fantastic to see their vision grow. So I’m thrilled to welcome Angela here today, as she’s going to share writing-related goodies with us.
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A bit over a year ago, Beyoncé surprised the music world by secretly dropping a new album with zero promotion in advance. Can we apply this strategy to the publishing world? If we run a lot of promo pre-release, by the time we have buy links, will people think our book is old news?
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Whether we won NaNoWriMo or not, we survived November, and I want to take a moment to gasp—er, breathe. After everything that went wrong with my month, winning feels like a miracle. So let’s talk about how we can move forward from any draft, NaNo or not.
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Welcome to the log-in for Jami’s Virtual Classroom! This log-in is used only for her live webinars. Coming Up Next! …Between the Sheets: Create a Deeper Romance with the Romance Beat Sheet Date & Time: Thursday, October 24th, 9 p.m. Eastern (New York) time/6 p.m. Pacific time Log-in Information: Type the name you gave for the […]
I’m a big fan of Michael Hauge’s approach to characters. His insights helped me figure out how to match a character’s internal journey to the external plot. This is often tricky, though, so let’s go deeper into how characters change.
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Every story beat or turning point scene—when events affect the main story question, conflict, or goal—needs to be included in a story. But what about non-turning-point scenes? How can we tell when to include them and when we can skip ahead?
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Our stories are filled with scenes where (hopefully) things happen, but only some of those events are turning points and belong on a beat sheet. So how can we identify our story structure?
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