Revise vs. Start New: Which Is Better When We’re Stuck?
Ever hear the tip: Don’t let yourself get stuck on a single story? How can we know whether to listen or ignore that advice?
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Choosing Just the Right Words — Guest: Kathy Steinemann
Choosing the right word requires us to know grammar, consider voice, avoid typos, and possess a large vocabulary. Homophones add a layer of difficulty.
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Worldbuilding a Series: Writing without a Plan
Some writers plan their worldbuilding details in advance. Others…not so much. How can we worldbuild when we write a series by the seat of our pants?
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Worldbuilding: Your Story World’s History 101
Worldbuilding means we have to create the “rules” for our characters and their story world. How can we can develop our story’s world to make it feel real?
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What Defines Our Story? Drive vs. Focus
Ever feel like popular writing advice doesn’t apply to your story? Defining our story’s mix of drive vs. focus might help us know when advice is a bad fit.
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Creating Characters Who Clash — Guest: Angela Ackerman
Every page of our story should include tension, such as friction between characters, but how do we create characters who clash? Let’s see how to develop characters who create tension in every interaction.
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Making a Big Revision? Stitching Our Story’s Rips Together
It’s time for another post as a Resident Writing Coach over at Writers Helping Writers, and this time we’re talking about how to stitch together the pieces of our story after a big revision.
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More Than a Happy Ending: What Makes a Story Uplifting?
The romance genre is often called “aspirational,” but even romances with a happy ending can fail at being uplifting. What other elements contribute to an uplifting story and what can they teach us about other genres?
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Struggle to Write Characters? Here’s Help!
As writers, we have to make our characters seem real to readers, but it’s often not easy. So here’s two resources that can help us create characters that seem real.
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Story Tropes: How Do We Twist a Cliché?
Sometimes we’ll hear writing advice like “avoid clichés,” but what does that mean when it comes to story tropes? After all, can’t tropes be helpful? And if so, how do we make them less cliché?
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