Where Normal Need Not Apply
Editing tips and advice. Sample topics: saving broken stories, revising tricks, using beat sheets for revisions, making our writing stronger, MS Word tricks, fixing unlikable characters, etc.
I’ve been helping Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi at Writers Helping Writers keep a big secret: The Emotion Thesaurus Second Edition! Angela and Becca have added new responses, new entries, and new writing tips.
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Ever notice how some stories transport you more immersively into the story world? Author coach J. E. Martin is sharing her 5-step plan to help our writing create a cinematic experience for our readers.
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Fiction has to make more sense than real life, and logic and consistency are required. Selina J. Eckert shares her advice on how to make sure our fiction rings true through fact-checking.
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Longer writing—such as stories—can often be easier to write than something shorter, like a synopsis, query, Twitter pitch, or log line. That’s why the skills important in poetry can strengthen our prose writing.
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A truly broken story is one where the pieces of the story don’t come together in a coherent whole. But if we’re willing to put in the work, virtually any story can be saved. Then question then is: What steps should we take to fix a broken story?
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It’s time for another post as a Resident Writing Coach over at Writers Helping Writers, and this time we’re talking about the lessons we can learn from TV writing that might help us with scene and chapter hooks.
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Just as our characters can have inner and outer layers, the same applies to their goals. Those two types of goals can give them internal and external arcs. But what do we mean by conflicting goals—and how do false beliefs play a role?
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In the writing world, we’ve probably heard the advice to create layers in our stories and characters. But the word layers can refer to many different aspects of writing, so let’s take a deeper look at one aspect of layering: character layers.
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The word showing obviously makes us think visually, but same as us, our characters experience the world through more than just their visual sense. What are our options for showing beyond visual descriptions? Can we create a deeper world by engaging other senses?
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Recently, a blog reader asked me whether she should worry about her word count while she revised. Her question highlights how a better understanding of the revision process can help our storytelling.
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