Showing vs. Telling: How Do We Choose?
One of the most common pieces of writing advice is to Show, Don’t Tell. In many cases, that’s good advice, but as with most advice, that “rule” is imperfect and incomplete.
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NaNo Prep: Getting a Handle on Our Story
To make NaNo work for us, we need to figure out our goals for the experience—and there’s no wrong answer. However, if our goal is to create a coherent story, we should try to understand story structure.
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Antagonists: The End-All-Be-All of Our Story — Guest: Kristen Lamb
Over the past couple of weeks, Kristen Lamb has been kind enough to let me share her insights on antagonists: what they are, why they help define our story, how to strengthen them, etc. Today, we’re exploring how antagonists create our story from beginning to end.
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Self Publishing? Match Your Plans to Your Goals — Part Three
My series about Indie Publishing Paths at Fiction University has highlighted some of the choices we have to make as self-published authors, including what our newsletter strategy should be. Can our goals help us decide?
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Writing Craft: Balancing Rules and Voice
Many aspects of writing are subjective, so we often need to discuss how to find the right balance. One element we need to balance is the rules of writing versus our writing voice. How can we know when we should break the rules for the sake of our voice?
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Self Publishing? Match Your Plans to Your Goals — Part Two
My series about Indie Publishing Paths at Fiction University has highlighted some of the choices we have to make as self-published authors, including how to keep readers. Can our goals help us decide?
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The Most Important Question in Storytelling: “Why?”
A common problem—even in traditionally published books—is Missing Motivations. A character’s goal can feel irrelevant if readers don’t understand why they have that goal. Or a character might seem stupid or unlikable if readers don’t know why they’re acting a certain way.
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Self Publishing? Match Your Plans to Your Goals — Part One
My series about Indie Publishing Paths at Fiction University has highlighted some of the choices we have to make as self-published authors, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed when faced with so much uncertainty. So where do we start?
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Make Settings Come to Life with Sensory Details — Guest: Christina Delay
We’ve talked before about adding depth to our settings, but there’s another way to bring our settings to life and immersing readers in our story: layering unique details and sensory information. Today, Christina Delay to shows us how.
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5 Ways to Discover & Develop Our Voice
Many people have tried to identify what goes into creating our voice, but it’s a hard thing to define. We often just know it when we see it. Voice is personal—not just for writers, but also for readers. Yet we can identify—and strengthen—the 5 elements that go into our voice.
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