Story Tropes: How Do We Twist a Cliché?
Sometimes we’ll hear writing advice like “avoid clichés,” but what does that mean when it comes to story tropes? After all, can’t tropes be helpful? And if so, how do we make them less cliché?
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6 Ways to Show Emotions for Non-POV Characters — Guest: Becca Puglisi
Writers need readers to grasp emotional information from non-POV characters, which can be a struggle. Becca Puglisi, co-author of the Emotion Thesaurus shares 6 techniques to avoid the problem.
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Need Help Writing Emotions? The Emotion Thesaurus Second Edition Is Here!
I’ve been helping Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi at Writers Helping Writers keep a big secret: The Emotion Thesaurus Second Edition! Angela and Becca have added new responses, new entries, and new writing tips.
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3 Ways to Define the Essence of Our Character
A character’s essence is about more than just unique characters, but what is their essence? These 3 perspectives on character essence teach us about our characters.
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Make Characters Unique with Layering
Somewhere along our learning curve as writers, we’re likely to come across the skill of layering. Layering can help us create unique characters, no matter how stereotypical or tropey they might be on the surface.
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Merry Christmas! Time for Powerful Traditions
Traditions are part of our lives, so they should be part of our characters’ lives too. We can add a touch of realism to our stories by including a sense of traditions between characters.
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Creating Satisfying Endings without Clichés
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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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?
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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.
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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?
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