Craft-of-Writing Series
Below, you’ll find all of the series on the craft (and life) of writing I’ve posted over the years, ordered by category. To view the posts in a certain topic, click on the series title, and you’ll be taken to a new window/tab linking to all the posts in that series.
Preparing to Write/General Writing Tips:
How do you become a writer? Where do story ideas come from? How do you cultivate creativity, imagination, and inspiration? These and other questions are explored for those who are thinking about starting a journey in fiction writing—or who just need a reminder of why you started writing in the first place.
Take a master class from the best-selling fiction authors of all time . . . by learning how to read critically and analyze published works to learn the craft and techniques that master storytellers both in and out of your genre use to create compelling stories that stand the test of time.
Never use adverbs. Always show instead of tell. You have to be active on social media. Read as many craft books as you can. Sound familiar? You’ve probably heard these and more taught as “rules” of writing. More often than not, though they’re myths. And I’m here to debunk them.
My Writing Tools (Software, Hardware, and Post-it Notes)
Since I’ve written far too many pieces of posts that include bits about my writing process and the tools I use, the easiest thing for me to do instead of trying to do one long (long) post about it is to link to where I’ve covered this topic previously.
National Novel Writing Month (NaNo) Prep
Preparing to write a manuscript in a month can be a daunting prospect—especially if you aren’t prepared. So let’s get prepped!
This is the year you’ve promised yourself that you’re finally going to get around to writing that novel. So let’s get ready, let’s get set, and let’s write.
Set aside a completed manuscript to create objectivity. Don’t think; just write. Make lists. Here’s a list of the top-ten tips that have helped me the most as a professional author.
WRITE: An Inspirational Acrostic
Craft of Fiction Writing
Beginnings, Middles, and Endings
Characters:
Bad Guys: The Villains and Antagonists We Love to Hate
With help from two books I picked up—The Power of the Dark Side
(Pamela Jaye Smith) and Bullies, Bastards & Bitches (Jessica Page Morrell)—we’ll analyze the bad-guy characters in our writing and reading. And for those of you who aren’t writers, we’ll be looking at the antagonists in books and movies for examples.
When you write, do you collect photos of “your characters”—actors, models, singers, athletes, etc.—so you can better describe them? Do you need to have a photo of a person before you can start writing about your characters? Have you ever seen an actor or a photo of a person who inspired you to write a story? Then you might be a visually oriented writer—and Character Casting may be a great tool for your writing toolbox!
Creating Credible Characters (I love alliteration!), will be about our characters (duh!): where they come from, how we get to know them, and how we get them to come to life on the page.
The conflicts in your story are the points that make up the majority of your plot. You will need minor conflicts (resolved in one or two scenes) and major conflicts—those that affect the outcome of the story.
Picture this scenario: You’re watching your absolutely favorite show. Things are getting dicy for the heroes. All of a sudden, there’s an explosion! Your heroes’ lives are in danger! What’s going to happen to them? Are they okay? Will they survive? Then, the screen goes black. And then you see: TO BE CONTINUED. “NOOOOOOOOOOO!” you scream. “I have to know what happens next!” | This is what we discuss in this series.
In modern-day writing terminology, Point of View has come to mean not only what “person” the story is written (1st, 2nd, 3rd) but also which characters’ viewpoints the story is told through. Learn more about both POVs and viewpoints in this series.
Plotting, Subplots, and Structuring/Outlining Your Novel
Now, with all this talk of rising action and suspense, I know it sounds like I’m talking about something that is more action-related, something that has life-and-death consequences. While those are the easiest stories to use as illustrations for plotting—because they’re plot-driven—what I plan to get into in this series is looking at how plot works at its most basic levels, which can then be applied to all genres.
“Say What?”—A Series About Dialogue
Since 99% of writers are readers, we all know when dialogue “works” and when it doesn’t when we read it. We just may not be able to put our fingers on exactly what it is that makes it work or not. Well, that’s what we’re going to try to figure out in this series.
The main thing that makes a scene a scene is action—something needs to happen in the scene to move the plot forward in order for the scene to be relevant to the overall book. “Character development” conversations or conflicts are good—but they must move the plot forward. Otherwise, they’re stagnant and will drag the story down.
When all is said and done, scenes are the bite-sized pieces in which we tell and digest stories. But how do we make sure that they’re gourmet and not fast-food . . . or worse, inedible?
That’s what we’re going to look at in this series.
Would Steel Magnolias have had the same characters if set in a beauty shop on the rough streets of Detroit? Would Jack and Rose’s upstairs-downstairs romance have had the same level tension if they hadn’t been on a certain ill-fated luxury liner? And who can think of Lord of the Rings without bringing to mind the White City of Gondor, the Shire, or Edoras with the Great Hall of Meduseld sitting atop that hill out in the middle of nowhere surrounded by mountains.
What cinematographers can do with cameras, lighting, and computer-generated graphics, we writers must do with words on a page. And not only that, we must do it in a way that incorporates the grittiness of a New York street or the relaxed, honey-filled air of a small Midwestern town into the action of our stories without being intrusive. Movies are allowed wide, sweeping angles of an Arizona desert at sunset. We aren’t.
Showing versus telling is like the difference between watching a movie and having the plot of a movie recounted to you by someone who’s seen it. Or, between reading a book and reading the synopsis or outline. The first is active, experienced first-hand, immediate. The second is passive, second- or third-hand, distant.
A writer’s voice, like the voice of our favorite singer, the familiar person on the other end of the phone, or an actor using his or her own accent, is something that is easy to recognize and nearly impossible to define. So let’s explore it. Let’s see if we can define what voice is and then figure out how to go about cultivating our own unique voices as writers.
When it comes to fiction, what is a series? Well, to put it simply, a fiction series is a number of books written around a particular continuity theme. It can be a duet, a trilogy, or an open-ended number of books, but they are a series only if there is some thread that ties them all together. Let’s explore what series are, how to tie them together, and the pros, cons, and pitfalls of writing them.
If we were to survey 100 romance novelists why they write romance novels, we would get approximately 5,000 reasons. But I think what it boils down to is that we’re adrenaline junkies, just like those people who dive off cliffs in Hawaii, skydive, snowboard, or subject themselves to horror films. It’s just that we get our adrenaline rush from the emotions evoked by two characters facing and defeating the odds to achieve what is so rare in real life: a happily ever after ending.
This page includes links to my series “Beyond the First Draft” which discusses re-reading, revisions, and some old-school submission information (pre-2010) and my series “Manuscript 101” which covers some basics of copy editing for fiction writers, as well as a collection of other one-off posts (or posts from other series) that include information on what to do after finishing the first draft.
The Writer’s Life
Being a good critique partner is a talent, but can be learned as a skill if worked at hard enough. So, let’s explore together what it takes to learn the skill of both giving and receiving critiques. I’d love for you to post your comments, questions, and concerns about your critique experiences.
Some writers get caught in a hamster wheel of being a professional contest entrant instead of striving to be a published writer. They spend so much time working on their first ten, fifteen, or twenty-five pages to enter into contests, but never finish a manuscript—or if the manuscript is completed, they never spend any time revising the rest of it but just keep tweaking the first part based on contest judges’ feedback. And it really made me think about why I chose to enter HEI/SIG that second time. And while I did enter it twice, in two vastly different incarnations, “entering a contest” wasn’t my main focus—the contest feedback was the litmus test to see if it was ready to be submitted to editors and agents.
We all have dreams. Things we want. Things we hope for. But will the dream of “being a writer” actually get you there? Is it something that’s as nebulous, as insubstantial, as the stories that run through our heads when we’re asleep? Or is the dream attainable? I thought we’d delve into that here. So let’s get started.
Networking / Writing Conferences
I am an introvert. I spent the first nearly 15 years of my adult working life in advertising sales offices as a support person—the person in the background who supported the outgoing, vivacious, talk-to-anyone sales people. Just the mention of the term “networking” made me ill. Until I started attending writing conferences and gaining confidence in myself as a person and as a writer. And just like that, I realized that the things I was doing naturally through that process was networking! I break down what networking really is in a couple of focused series here, as well as another series about attending writers conferences.
Jump in with the fun in a few posts of jokes/memes describing the writer life!
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