NaNo WriMo
NaNo WriMo is a world-wide challenge that happens between November 1st and 30th. It stands for National Novel Writing Month. Every person that signs up for it is tasked to write 50,000 words in those 30 days. A lot of you have probably already heard about this, but I wanted to write a post anyways. [...]
Research 101
The key to making a good book is making it believable. If you’ve been doing the writing gig for a certain amount of time, odds are you’ve heard of this quiet dispute among writers: do you write what you know, or what you don’t know? A good strategy (regardless if you’re the kind of writer [...]
Functions of a Prologue, Part 6
This episode will talk about using prologues to introduce out-of-sequence events or information. A good way to use this kind of prologue is if you are using only one POV in third person, or using first person, and the whole novel is told only from the protagonist’s view, but your readers need information from someone [...]
Write What You Love
Why spend all the time, effort, hair-pulling and chocolate-binging writing 100,000 words if your heart isn’t in it? Seems kind of wasteful. The key to good writing, is to let your passion for the subject and for the characters to shine through to your readers. Knowing your genre and what is expected by readers can [...]
Save Everything!
Whether it’s easy for you to cut those 10,000 words of excess description and unnecessary adjectives, or if it’s hard to adhere to a shorter word count that means cutting a couple of your favorite scenes, do not throw any of it away. When other writers or workshops or English teachers teach you to “dump” [...]
Random Writing Exercise #9
By the way — these exercises are going to go on to 100+ with one or more per week. Hope you guys are getting your creative juices flowing!! – In too many manuscripts, the protagonist’s motivations are much too shallow. Reasons that are confusing, or weak will not make your protagonist seem real to the [...]
Functions of a Prologue, Part 5
The function of a prologue I’ll be talking about today is to establish who is telling the story, and why. This works especially well if there’s something really unique about your main character, or a major POV character. For example, including a shopping list for strange items that relate to a later part of the [...]
Random Writing Exercise #8
Describe a beautiful natural setting (a lake, national park, or mountain view) from the point of view of someone who has just lost a parent in a sudden, unexpected fashion. The last time that this person talked to/saw their parent, they had a nasty argument. The purpose of this exercise is not to portray the [...]
Emotions and Actions
A character’s emotional history and personality will determine they way s/he acts or reacts in every situation. One of the most important things in developing your characters is ensuring that they are consistent with their actions and emotions, no matter how weird or insane their personality is, they need to be the same level of [...]
