Merry Christmas! Time for Powerful Traditions
Traditions are part of our lives, so they should be part of our characters’ lives too. We can add a touch of realism to our stories by including a sense of traditions between characters.
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5 Ways to Create Movie Magic in Your Writing — Guest: J. E. Martin
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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How Can We Get Away with Breaking Writing Rules?
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 stories that successfully break writing “rules.”
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Creating Satisfying Endings without Clichés
A recent Twitter thread brought up problematic reader expectations with story endings. Can we find a balance between “fulfilling our story’s promise and our genre’s expectations” and avoiding a cliché ending?
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Storytelling: Taking Readers on a Journey
When faced with the many decisions of writing our story, the best choice is whatever tells the story we want to tell, but what does that mean? Let’s take a look at what storytelling really is and how we can improve our skills.
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Your Story’s Promise: Do You Need an Epilogue?
Given reviews about too-abrupt endings, readers might want a sense of closure beyond what authors deliver. Should we use epilogues—or epilogue-like endings—to breach the gap?
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Epilogue Pros and Cons: But Wait — There’s More!
We often talk about the pros and cons of prologues, but epilogues can be good or bad as well. Let’s look at how epilogues differ from normal endings, what they can do, and what they shouldn’t do.
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How to Save a Broken Story
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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Branding 101: What Does Our Brand Promise to Readers?
Just as we have go-to favorite authors that we know we can depend on for delivering a certain type of story, readers are evaluating us for what we can deliver: What’s our promise to readers when they pick up one of our stories?
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Breaking Down the Steps of Revision to Improve Our Storytelling
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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