-
Fantastic Fridays: A Tiny Plan For A Small Writing Victory
When we think about our writing goals, we tend to think big. We set our eyes on the prize – the finished story, the published book – and we forget the small steps that lie between our starting point and the prize. You can’t write a story without writing a bunch of paragraphs. A paragraph is not possible without sentences. A sentence requires words. Words start from ideas…and so on. There are all kinds of small victories to plan for and celebrate on the path between our first word and our finished story. If you are trying to write but the thought of the “prize” is too daunting, perhaps you…
-
Fantastic Fridays: Celebrate Every Word & Every Minute
When we’re aiming to create a writing practice or to complete a specific writing project, we tend to keep our eyes on the road ahead. It’s great to know where we are going, obviously, but have you taken a glance over your shoulder recently? If we always looking forward, we only see the distance between our current position and our goal. But, if we glance backward, we’ll see how far we have come. It is worth taking the time to notice your progress. And it is worth taking time to celebrate your hard work. Even if – especially if- your hard work has mostly been about figuring out how to…
-
Create a Writing Habit that Works for You
What do you think is the one thing that successful writers have in common? Talent, you might say. An extraordinarily creative mind. Persistence. Maybe just plain luck. All of these can play a role, but they aren’t the determining factor. Consider what these well-known authors have said. Maya Angelou: “I keep a hotel room in which I do my work… I try to get there around seven, and I work until two in the afternoon.” Alice Munro: “I write every morning, seven days a week. I write starting about eight o’clock and finish around eleven…. I have a quota of pages.” Steven King: “I try to get six pages a…
-
Must Haves For Exciting Inciting Incidents
Every good story needs an inciting incident. Is yours exciting enough?
-
What Do I Do When My Story Isn’t Going Anywhere?
It is very possible to want to write a story, have a story idea, and plan on knocking out 50,000 words in 30 days without really knowing the important necessities of a story. Sure, in Western Culture we've heard countless stories, we have a general idea of beginning, middle and end. We know that you need characters and setting and some sort of plot despite the title of this book. But to write a story you really need to get a handle on what's needed in a GOOD ONE before you try crafting one.
-
Take 5 Friday: Five Gentle Reminders About Writing
Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! Joyous Friday! Whatever you are celebrating (or not celebrating today) I hope this post finds you with some of your favourite comforts and, perhaps with a little time to write! As a little holiday gift, I offer you these five gentle reminders about your writing. You can write whatever you want If you are writing for your own happiness, to work your way through something, or for the sheer joy of stringing words together, you can’t write whatever you please. You don’t need to be writing something that someone else would see as useful. Your writing can be just for you. It’s okay to write something…
-
Five More Ways To Make Your Story “Good”
Do you ever wonder if your writing is any good? That’s the problem with this question; we may not even know what we're asking.
-
Eight Must Haves For A Great Story
Now there are other issues that you may want to address as you plod along with your work-in-progress, like point of view or genre. But these eight are crucial. Learn all you can, practice all you can, and get all the help you can. And you can be an excellent storyteller.
-
Five Ways To Make Your Story “Good”
Unfortunately, that descriptor "good" is a vague one. We may not even know what we're asking when we ask it. We may not want anything from the person we are asking except a nod, and maybe their dinner order. We really only want validation that our creative efforts aren't wasted and that maybe that MFA degree wasn't a waste of money.
-
Five Ways To Develop Writers Voice
Each life has a unique story and we can't help but be affected by our heartbreaks and victories. We've all be educated in one way or another and this will play a role in the development of our writer voice.
-
How To Make Your Scenes More Cinematic
You've read over the descriptions of the settings that were rich and details. As you turned the pages, you may have had a sense of action and tension that felt exactly right. As you read the dialogue, you could actually hear the characters speaking. You saw them bust into the safe, stash the jewels into their pockets, and scurry out the back door before the owner walked in the front. You love books that read like movies.
-
Five More Questions To Ask About Authority To Beef Up Your Conflict
An authority figure can have more wisdom, more age, more experience, more power, more and they use that more to try to control our protagonist.
-
Five Questions About Authority To Beef Up Your Conflict
Understanding the nature of the authorities in your fiction will help you define your characters, it will beef up your conflict and it will clarify your antagonists. Your main character has less. The authority figure has more. As you are planning how your main character can get in and out of trouble, consider how this imbalance can build and sustain your conflict.
-
Take 5 Friday: Five Ways to Get to Know Your Characters
When I write, I love to know a lot about my characters. I don’t just want to explore who they are inside my story, I want to think of them as (almost) real people who have full lives and histories. My story is just a glimpse into one part of that fully-lived life. When I think of my characters in that way, it gives them more depth and gives their actions more meaning. They aren’t just a plot device created for the point I want to make, they are people who are doing their best with the knowledge they have developed over their lifetimes. One of the ways that I…