Beyond the Past: Understanding the Past Perfect Tense
Many writers struggle to use the past perfect tense correctly, so let’s review when the past perfect tense applies to our story and how to use it properly.
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Character Internalization: To Italicize or Not to Italicize?
A common question in writing forums asks when we should italicize a character’s thoughts. How should we format our characters’ internalizations?
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Writing Craft Basics: How to Format Dialogue
We probably think we know everything about dialogue formatting already, but let’s make sure we know all there is to know before assuming.
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Story Elements: Give Them Purpose
For a strong story pace, we need to ensure every element has purpose. How can we do that? How can we know if a scene or sentence is pointless?
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Unreliable Narrators: The Pros and Cons
Let’s talk unreliable narrators: What can they do for our story, how can we create them, and what are the pros and cons of using them?
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Romance Beats vs. 12 Stages of Intimacy
A reader asked how we’d place the 12 Stages on Intimacy on a beat sheet for the best pacing. Can we mesh the 12 Stages with romance beats in a story?
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Backstory: Avoid Info Dumping by Making It Essential: Part 5 — Guest: Kris Kennedy
Once we know what our character’s backstory makes them think they could never do, we know how to show their path of change and growth over the story.
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Backstory: Avoid Info Dumping by Making It Essential: Part 4 — Guest: Kris Kennedy
A character’s backstory reveals what they thought they could never do, which gives us ideas for our plot and making them face their fears.
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Backstory: Avoid Info Dumping by Making It Essential: Part 3 — Guest: Kris Kennedy
A character’s backstory can be mined to add more emotion to our stories, such as by layering how their backstory’s defining moment affected them.
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Backstory: Avoid Info Dumping by Making It Essential: Part 2 — Guest: Kris Kennedy
A character’s false belief is central to a story’s internal arc, and the defining moment in a character’s backstory is key to creating that false belief.
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