Do Your Characters Take on a Life of Their Own?
How can we get to know our characters well enough that they take on a life of their own? Is it a good sign if we hear their voice?
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Writing Projects: Are We Ever Really Done?
We often struggle to call projects done. Especially if we self-publish, many of our projects are never-ending, and that can create a feeling of burnout.
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The Pros and Cons of Experimenting
The processes that worked on our last story might not work on our next one, but we want to think about the pros and cons before experimenting.
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What Can Authors and Readers Learn from #CopyPasteCris?
In the recent scandal known as #CopyPasteCris, Cristiane Serruya plagiarized a lot of books. We’re looking at how it happened and what (if anything) can be done to prevent it from happening again.
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Happy New Year! Get a Fresh Start
With the New Year, I like the idea of fresh starts, so I’m sharing a tip from Twitter on how we can draft our story in a different font than usual to help us see everything with fresh eyes.
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Complex Story? Use a Crime Wall — Guest: Kitty The Retro-Writer
When we’re drafting or editing our story, we usually have to keep track characters, secrets, plots, research, and story bible details. But for complex stories, we might want to create a Writer Crime Wall.
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Recognizing Quality Writing: Can We Tell If We’re Any Good?
What makes writing “good” takes more than just learning writing craft. That gap between tangible skills and enjoyable stories means it’s always difficult to define what makes for good writing—especially our own.
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Punch Up Our Writing with Word Lists
At some point in our editing process, we usually have to get nitpicky about our word choices because the right words often don’t come out in the first draft. This step can be tedious but oh-so-important for strengthening our writing and improving our story’s pace.
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Happy New Year! Time to Leave Guilt Behind…
This time of year is ripe for wrap-ups of what we accomplished over the previous year. However, it’s easy to reach the end of 2017 and feel like a failure for not accomplishing enough or not reaching a certain goal or milestone.
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5 Ways to Recover from Being Stuck — Guest: Lisa Gail Green
Sometime during our writing career, we’re bound to feel stuck. To help us, Lisa Gail Green shares how to recover when we think we’ve reached a dead end.
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