Where Normal Need Not Apply
We reveal our story through countless decisions in every scene, and we sometimes know which options seem right for our story. But other times, we might not be sure. In those cases, how do we decide which way to play out a scene?
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One of the new features at the RWA conference this year was the Planner and Writing Tools Demo Rooms. Two whole rooms filled with pens, planners, stickers, washi tape, mice, keyboards, standing desks, chairs, etc.
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Need a beat sheet for a short story? Technically, my beat sheets can be customized for any length story, but let’s take a look at how story structure changes with our story’s length and how beat sheets might need to adjust for short stories.
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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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It’s time for another post as a Resident Writing Coach over at Writers Helping Writers, and this time we’re talking about plot holes, especially the kind that sneak into our stories.
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We’ve been working to ensure my mega-lists of writing craft skills for story development, line editing, and copy editing are as complete as possible. Today, we’re diving into a deeper explanation of theme development.
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Learn what skills to study with my master list of Story Development skills. What craft skills do we need to understand and be able to apply to develop a story and characters?
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Many of my most popular posts share tools I’ve developed to help writers. By request, here’s a Scrivener template for my Master Beat Sheet, which combines the Save the Cat Beat Sheet and my Story Engineering Beat Sheet.
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We’ve been talking about the difference types of transitions we might create between scenes and plot events. Today, we’re focusing on the types of sentences that will strengthen our scene endings (and thus our scenes).
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To make NaNo work for us, we need to figure out our goals for the experience—and there’s no wrong answer. However, if our goal is to create a coherent story, we should try to understand story structure.
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