Your Story’s Promise: Do You Need an Epilogue?
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?
Pin It
Epilogue Pros and Cons: But Wait — There’s More!
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.
Pin It
How to Use Focused Brainstorming to Develop Our Plot — Guest: Janice Hardy
Unless we’re only ever going to write just one book, we need to improve our ability to develop an idea into a story. That means we need to learn how to brainstorm in a productive way.
Pin It
NaNo Prep: Is Your Story Idea Ready?
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.
Pin It
How to Save a Broken Story
A truly broken story is one where the pieces of the story don’t come together in a coherent whole. But if we’re willing to put in the work, virtually any story can be saved. Then question then is: What steps should we take to fix a broken story?
Pin It
Brainstorming Your Story? Proactively Avoid Issues
After we finish brainstorming and start trying to assemble our ideas into a story, that’s the perfect point in our writing process to avoid major problems by questioning what story issues we might run into before we write too many words.
Pin It
Can TV Shows Help Us Hook Our Readers?
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 TV writing that might help us with scene and chapter hooks.
Pin It
Character Conflict: Goals, Needs, and False Beliefs
Just as our characters can have inner and outer layers, the same applies to their goals. Those two types of goals can give them internal and external arcs. But what do we mean by conflicting goals—and how do false beliefs play a role?
Pin It
Choices, Choices: Debating How a Scene Should Play Out
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?
Pin It
Ask Jami: How Can We Use Beat Sheets with Short Stories?
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.
Pin It