Where Normal Need Not Apply
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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Depending on the type of villain in our story, the psychology we use to create our character changes. Kassandra Lamb shares her 8 “do’s and don’ts” to help us create our villains.
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Post-NaNo and editing, how do we want to publish our work? Deborah Makarios shares her insights into what Creative Commons is and how it might apply to authors and our stories.
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The antagonist in our story might be a love interest or truly evil or anything in between. When our story requires a villain, we might struggle to avoid clichés. Kassandra Lamb shares her insights into psychopaths, sociopaths, and other bad guys.
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Fiction has to make more sense than real life, and logic and consistency are required. Selina J. Eckert shares her advice on how to make sure our fiction rings true through fact-checking.
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Longer writing—such as stories—can often be easier to write than something shorter, like a synopsis, query, Twitter pitch, or log line. That’s why the skills important in poetry can strengthen our prose writing.
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Writers often suffer from self-doubt. We’re not sure if our story idea is interesting enough, if we’re the right person to write our idea. All that self-doubt can lead us to reject ourselves before others do—or before they even can.
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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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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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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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