Where Normal Need Not Apply
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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It’s that time of year again. My eight-year blogiversary is coming up on July 12th. And I’m once again amazed by the fact that I’ve been writing this blog for eight years. How can something feel like yesterday and forever at the same time?
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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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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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For many writers, revision is the scariest step of the editing process because it involves much bigger changes than simply tweaking a sentence or word. Lisa Poisso is sharing her suggestions for how to improve our revision skills.
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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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Because our themes live in the subtext, it’s easy to create unintended themes that undermine our intended theme. That risk increases if we’re trying to create success themes but our story has a bittersweet ending.
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As part of last week’s giveaway, I added several suggestions to the Writing Craft Master Lists, but before I announce the winner, let’s share our favorite writing resources.
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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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With a “master list of craft skills,” we know what skills to study. Here’s 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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