Where Normal Need Not Apply
We all have emotions, so we all think we know how to write them. However, sometimes the best writing comes from exposing an emotional truth that we’re hiding from ourselves. So the better we understand emotions, the better our stories will resonate with our readers.
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A common question among those getting ready to indie publish is “Should I use pre-orders or just publish right away?” My monthly guest post over at Janice Hardy’s Fiction University is digging deeper into our options for our release schedule and talking about the pros and cons for each choice.
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As we learn writing craft, we often go through phases. Just when we think we know everything there is to know, we discover another area to learn. One area I struggle with, even though I know the rules, is out-of-POV phrases. Luckily, one of my editors is a genius at finding these, and she’s here to share her tips.
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Yesterday marked the release of my fourth book, Ironclad Devotion, and I think I’m going to collapse now. This release marks the end of my “master plan,” also known as my daisy-chain release schedule. I first came up with that plan about a year ago, and I can’t quite believe it actually worked.
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Last week, we talked about how we can add diversity to our stories in a respectful way, and no matter what kind of story we write, we’re probably going to need to research something. Whether we’re referring to an aspect of diversity, a setting, or a character’s job, we can’t know everything about everything.
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The real world is filled with diversity, and our stories should be the same way. There’s no “one right way” to portray diverse characters, but there are wrong ways to portray diversity. However, there are steps we can take to minimize—as much as possible—the potential of “getting it wrong.”
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Back when we first started writing, we might have been writing for ourselves, but for many of us, we expanded our goals somewhere along the line to focus on what others think of our work or how we might sell our work. Are we ready with a plan that will support that next step and the steps after that?
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We’ve probably all heard stories about ebook formatting problems, but we can be at a loss for how to tell a good formatter from a bad one. What issues should we watch out for? What questions should we ask? Even if we traditionally publish, we might want to judge whether our publisher knows what they’re doing for ebook publishing.
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I started visiting the original The Bookshelf Muse website by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi soon after they started it, and it’s been fantastic to see their vision grow. So I’m thrilled to welcome Angela here today, as she’s going to share writing-related goodies with us.
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My regular readers know that I’m a pantser, but I’m naturally a planner/plotter in the rest of my life. So when a reader asked me how to build a scene list from a beat sheet, I didn’t shudder and scream in horror. Instead for my plotter-loving friends and readers, I figured I’d put together a real answer.
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