Choosing Just the Right Words — Guest: Kathy Steinemann
Choosing the right word requires us to know grammar, consider voice, avoid typos, and possess a large vocabulary. Homophones add a layer of difficulty.
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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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5 Ways to Create Movie Magic in Your Writing — Guest: J. E. Martin
Ever notice how some stories transport you more immersively into the story world? Author coach J. E. Martin is sharing her 5-step plan to help our writing create a cinematic experience for our readers.
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Want to Break Writing Rules? Gain Readers’ Trust
Just as there are risks to breaking writing rules, there’s risk in emphasizing them too much as well. And what does “strong writing” really mean when it comes to developing our voice?
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How Can We Get Away with Breaking Writing Rules?
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 stories that successfully break writing “rules.”
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Using Tips from Poetry to Strengthen Our Prose — Guest: Pamela Donison
Longer writing—such as stories—can often be easier to write than something shorter, like a synopsis, query, Twitter pitch, or log line. That’s why the skills important in poetry can strengthen our prose writing.
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Branding 101: What Does Our Brand Promise to Readers?
Just as we have go-to favorite authors that we know we can depend on for delivering a certain type of story, readers are evaluating us for what we can deliver: What’s our promise to readers when they pick up one of our stories?
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Beyond Visuals: How to “Show” with Other Senses
The word showing obviously makes us think visually, but same as us, our characters experience the world through more than just their visual sense. What are our options for showing beyond visual descriptions? Can we create a deeper world by engaging other senses?
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How Much of Yourself Is in Your Writing?
How much of yourself is in your writing? This question can dig much deeper into who we are than just the superficial, and the more we’re aware of our influences, the more we can improve our stories.
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Writing Craft Master Lists: Filling in the Blanks—Parallelism
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 parallel sentence structures.
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