For at least five or six years, I’ve been wanting to write a Christmas cozy mystery. I thought it would be fun to explore my recurring characters’ Christmas traditions and how the town celebrated.
Instead of thinking I had to contact hundreds of book bloggers to see if they’d like to review my book, I started with one blogger a week. By the end of 3 months, my book had appeared on about 20 blogs and received 10 reviews.
Crafting Authentic Dialogue: A Guide to Eliminating On-The-Nose Conversations Today’s writing tip comes from Alex Bloom, the founder of Script Reader Pro, a screenplay consultancy and blog
Burnout. Few words spark such dread among writers. Avoiding it, surviving it, and recovering from it are each the focus of many articles, blogs, podcasts, books, and conference classes. Still, most of us have or will find ourselves grappling with it. This struggle resembles a hiker who has fallen off an unforeseen cliff and now clings to the sheer rockface with desperate, failing fingers, unable to pull themselves up.
If you’re like me, when you have an idea for a character you go into serious planning mode. You might fill a notebook, use character questionnaires, worksheets, and other tools to uncover their inner layers. Or if you’re a pantser, you may decide to start writing a discovery draft to find out who they are and what the story is about as you go. Plan or pants, we all must end up with the same thing: a character who is rounded, credible, and unique.
When people say that a character is “flat” or “two-dimensional,” they’re typically just saying that the character isn’t interesting. And uninteresting characters are a plague on a story. Let’s look at a few techniques to make characters interesting, round, and three-dimensional.
As an author, you may not want to admit, but you really care about selling books. If you’re writing to get rich, you’ve got to sell millions of copies. If you’re more of a revolutionary and want to change the world, it would sure be a lot easier of a billion people adopted your ideas. Or if you want to be admired by others, you do want millions of fans.
Mastering dialogue subtext reveals the hidden depths of character interaction. By Becca Puglisi Realistic, evocative dialogue is an important part of any successful story.
You may have heard of pinch points. Or not. I’d guess that most fiction writers have no clue what they are or why they’re so
Some writers are so averse to personal conflict that they avoid writing about it too. Trust me, that may well serve as the death knell to your publishing prospects.
Mastering the Art of Writing Irresistible Romance Romance is one of the largest selling genres of all time. Yet, it often gets overlooked or seen
When you’re thinking about writing a story, you will come up with hundreds of ideas. A novel is never based on a single idea. Even a short story can’t work that way. I’ve heard people say, “I’m going to write a story about a guy who wakes up and finds a vampire sucking on his neck.
Stories start with a plot goal. While many writers point to conflict, or even the antagonist, as the first element of plot, in reality, it’s
bottom line books, bottomline books. bottom line books customer service & the bottom line book You got through the hard part of writing the book
Why is it important? Mary Buckham, USA Today Bestselling author recently presented WRITING ACTIVE SETTING for David Farland’s mentoring group, Apex-Writers. It is an important