Where Normal Need Not Apply
It’s almost time for NaNoWriMo, and if you’re anything like me, you might be freaking out a little as November nears. So here are several quick links to posts helping us plan, start, and get unstuck with our story.
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Authors who writes series often see more sales and success, but for writers who struggle to plan stories in advance, planning out a big series might be impossible. Let’s take a look at our options for planning series in advance.
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We’re talking guest posts—both my upcoming posts at the Writers Helping Writers site as one of their Resident Writing Coaches and an opportunity to guest post here on my blog during the month of November. And *psst* I need advice for NaNoWriMo too…
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Newsletters are an important tool for holding onto our readers from book to book, but they only work if subscribers open our emails. Let’s take a look at some of the strategies that might compel our subscribers to click on our messages.
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One of the things we struggle with as artists is handling the business side of writing. Today, Kathryn Goldman, an intellectual property attorney, is sharing insights on the business considerations for using pen names, whether for branding, copyright, or even content protection purposes.
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A story’s stakes are one element that keeps readers turning pages because they want to see if our characters succeed. At first glance, we might think bigger stakes are better for sucking in readers, but not every story lends themselves to huge stakes. Are “quieter” stories doomed to fail the “page-turner” test?
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Most (probably all) writers want to increase their productivity because we want to make the most of the writing time we have. However, we’re all different, so we might need to figure out the right style of productivity advice for us.
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Many new writers define “being a writer” as writing full-time, as though having day job equals an admission of failure or demonstrates a lack of professionalism. However, most writers do have day jobs, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
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I’ve offered several posts here about balancing various elements of our story, but there’s still room for debate because we have to find the right balance for our voice, genre, tone, and style—for our story. That means there is no perfect amount of backstory or description or emotion.
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We often think about the purpose of backstory in terms of “what do readers need to know?” But with that perspective, it’s too easy to include too much backstory. Instead, we might be better off if we think about backstory from the perspective of what the story needs.
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