Write Romance? Announcing a New Workshop!
Downloaded over 60,000 times, my Romance Beat sheet helps writers of all levels build romance stories. But how do we use this extremely popular tool?
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How to Get Expert Writing Advice…for Free!
The Romance Writers Summit gives writers—especially those who write romance—expert advice with the keys to write powerful fiction. All for free!
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How Can We Make Scenes Feel Stronger with Sequels?
Is a scene’s sequel—the reaction to a scene’s events—part of the scene? Or are they ever independent (and if so, how do we make them stronger)?
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“A Leap of Faith” in Fiction and in Life
Near the end of a story the protagonist often takes “a leap of faith.” How can we make our protagonist’s leap feel earned and strengthen our story’s theme?
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Can Passive Goals Ever Be Good for Our Story?
Our characters don’t want to change, so they often start with passive internal goals. How we can make those passive goals work for us and our story?
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Writer Flexibility: Trying New Things
The processes and techniques that worked on our last story might not work on our next one. So the more tools at our fingertips, the better our chances of finding something that will work.
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NaNo Prep: Is Your Story Idea Ready?
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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Ask Jami: How Can We Use Beat Sheets with Short Stories?
Need a beat sheet for a short story? Technically, my beat sheets can be customized for any length story, but let’s take a look at how story structure changes with our story’s length and how beat sheets might need to adjust for short stories.
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Can a Story Still Be Compelling with a “Quiet” Black Moment?
A Black Moment is an event in our story that steals the protagonist’s hope for a solution. However, some stories don’t make sense with a typical catastrophe for a Black Moment. How can we give them a Black Moment that will work?
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Writing Craft Master Lists: Filling in the Blanks—Theme Development
We’ve been working to ensure my mega-lists of writing craft skills for story development, line editing, and copy editing are as complete as possible. Today, we’re diving into a deeper explanation of theme development.
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