Highlights from RWA18 (Including That Speech)
If you attended RWA18, these thoughts might be interesting. If you didn’t attend the conference, these highlights might help you feel a part of the experience.
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Thursday Thoughts: The Antagonist Role in Romance
A recent post by Diana Hurwitz explored the nature of antagonists in romance novels. Today, we’re taking a deeper look at our options for antagonists, especially in the romance genre, and how we can avoid creating unhealthy relationships.
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How to Develop and Show a Healthy Romance — Guest: Bran L. Ayres
Whether we want to know for real-life purposes or for our writing, Bran’s post today helps us identify elements of healthy romances. Authors need to be careful of sending readers the wrong message. Everyone deserves to be in a healthy, loving relationship—including our characters.
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Should We Include Trigger Warnings for Our Story — Guest: Bran L. Ayres
With the rise of self-publishing, we’ve probably seen books that label the content inside, but if we’re not sure whether we should consider using trigger warnings, Bran L. Ayres is here to share their insights and tips on why they’re important and how to use them.
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Why Every Author—and Reader—Should Care about #Cockygate
With a name like #cockygate, it’s no surprise that the recent trademark brouhaha would elicit some snickers, and some are far too quick to dismiss the situation. But the reasons behind the trademark—as well as what results from the legal battle—affect us all.
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Can a Story Still Be Compelling with a “Quiet” Black Moment?
A Black Moment is an event in our story that steals the protagonist’s hope for a solution. However, some stories don’t make sense with a typical catastrophe for a Black Moment. How can we give them a Black Moment that will work?
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Romance and the Language of Consent
I’m proud to write romance, so it’s no surprise that the #MeToo movement has prompted a lot of thoughts in me about the role of the romance genre in women’s lives.
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Writing Your Worldview: Biases and Beyond
Science can be influenced by societal assumptions, so we certainly can’t keep “social ideas” out of our fiction. Our preferences, biases, beliefs, assumptions, etc. affect everything—whether we recognize them or not.
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Transition Techniques: Meanwhile, in Our Subplot…
Last time, we discussed how to identify and fix episodic writing to make our stories stronger with the “But” and “Therefore” rule. However, there’s another option for transitioning from scene to scene: the “meanwhile.”
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Understanding Our POV Choices — Guest: Susan Tuttle
When we first start writing, we might emulate what we’ve seen in our reading, but the default point of view isn’t necessarily the best choice. How can we know which choice is right for our story?
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