Where Normal Need Not Apply
If you’re anything like me, and your English or grammar instruction was less than ideal, you might not be familiar with the term rhetorical devices. But once I did learn about them, I quickly became aware of how using rhetorical devices can strengthen our writing—even if we’re writing genre stories.
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While we need to learn grammar rules for our writing, if we follow the rules too strictly, we can strangle our voice. Today, Julie Glover shares her tips on four steps to break grammar rules in a good way.
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A recent article about unlikable heroines pointed out that likability is often more of a problem for female characters than for male characters. While I’ve learned how to minimize those issues with my characters, the problem still rankles me.
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We’ve probably all heard (or thought!) that description is boring or the part readers skip. Yet our stories need description or else be confusing. Marcy Kennedy joins us today to share 5 tips to empower and add interest to our description by using contrast.
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The Thesaurus books by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi are a must-have for every fiction author, and they now have two new Thesauri books: Urban Setting and Rural Setting. Becca’s here today to talk about how setting is important for more than just describing the time and place of our scene.
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As writers, we’re always struggling to find time for everything, including social media. But every social media platform is different, so just because we don’t like one platform doesn’t mean another one won’t be a perfect fit, especially if we want to be where our readers are.
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As a modern writer, we’re expected to do so much that we struggle to find time to write—even if we’re traditionally published. No one will ever care about our career as much as we do, so that means we should pay attention to many aspects of entrepreneurship.
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One way to keep readers interested in our writing is to hook them with an excerpt to our next story at the end of our book. But there are times an excerpt could hurt our sales. When is it a good idea to include an excerpt—and when is it not?
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The learning curve we face when deciding to become a writer is always longer than we think because we don’t know what all we don’t know. So how can we track our progress? How can we tell whether we’re improving? How can we feel good about our writing?
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As writers, we do everything we can to make readers invested in our characters in some way. An invested reader is a happy reader, right?
Well, maybe not. Let’s take a look at the other side of character development.
