Where Normal Need Not Apply
Many of us start down the writing path without knowing the grammar rules. However, it’s best to know the rules before deciding to break them, especially as the proper use (and abuse) of grammar rules can strengthen our voice. Today’s guest post from Julie Glover shows how grammar can make a difference.
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Successful writing partnerships are all around us. How do they do it? Why do they do it? What are the pros and cons? Would it work for us? Today’s guest is Jennifer Hale, one-half of a writing team, and she’s here today to share seven tips she’s learned along their journey.
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It’s usually best to avoid “naming” emotions in our writing and to show those emotions instead. But to put the Emotion Thesaurus’s emotional cues into our voice, we might need to add our own spin, like from our observations of the real world. Today’s guest post has tips for how to develop our observing skills.
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As writers, we get to research anything we want. The problem comes when we think we know something, so we make assumptions without doing the research. Many of us assume we know the justice system because of the endless TV shows and movies depicting lawyers and courtrooms, but those sources don’t always get it right.
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We all have emotions, so we all think we know how to write them. However, sometimes the best writing comes from exposing an emotional truth that we’re hiding from ourselves. So the better we understand emotions, the better our stories will resonate with our readers.
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A common question among those getting ready to indie publish is “Should I use pre-orders or just publish right away?” My monthly guest post over at Janice Hardy’s Fiction University is digging deeper into our options for our release schedule and talking about the pros and cons for each choice.
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As we learn writing craft, we often go through phases. Just when we think we know everything there is to know, we discover another area to learn. One area I struggle with, even though I know the rules, is out-of-POV phrases. Luckily, one of my editors is a genius at finding these, and she’s here to share her tips.
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Last week, we talked about how we can add diversity to our stories in a respectful way, and no matter what kind of story we write, we’re probably going to need to research something. Whether we’re referring to an aspect of diversity, a setting, or a character’s job, we can’t know everything about everything.
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The real world is filled with diversity, and our stories should be the same way. There’s no “one right way” to portray diverse characters, but there are wrong ways to portray diversity. However, there are steps we can take to minimize—as much as possible—the potential of “getting it wrong.”
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Back when we first started writing, we might have been writing for ourselves, but for many of us, we expanded our goals somewhere along the line to focus on what others think of our work or how we might sell our work. Are we ready with a plan that will support that next step and the steps after that?
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