3 Tips for Consistent Tone
If you find yourself having a difficult time sustaining one tone over a long work, try these three tricks.1. Find a paragraph that sounds exactly the way you want to sound for this work, and tape it to...
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Crafting Novels & Short Stories
Crafting Novels & Short Stories by The Editors of Writer’s Digest Books Writer’s Digest Books, 2011 ISBN-13: 978-1-59963-571-2 ISBN-10: 1-59963-571-2 $19.99 paperback, 368 pagesBuy the Book at...
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50 Simple Ways to Build Your Platform in 5 Minutes a Day
Writing rules. Self-promotion drools. Isn’t this how most writers think?But as long as you view your writing as art and your self-promotion efforts as the furthest thing from art, your chances of...
View ArticleMore & More & More Tales To Give You Goosebumps (Yeah, We’re Talking About...
Something about R.L. Stine freaks me out.It’s not that he acts nothing like you might assume, though he is wearing all black. He’s funny and charming, and his amiable character throws kids off on...
View Article5 Simple Steps on Creating Suspense in Fiction
To keep the readers’ attention through the long midsection of your book, you’ll need to continually develop the conflict and advance the plot in logical steps without making the story predictable. What...
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How to Resurrect a Stalled Manuscript
Are you working on a nonfiction writing or fiction writing project that needs the mirror test just to see if it’s still breathing? If so, take a break from completing fiction projects. Hit the “Save”...
View ArticleHow to Write Effective Supporting Characters
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gave Sherlock Holmes a full panoply of supporting characters. There was Dr. Watson, the quintessential “sidekick,” to act as a sounding board; Scottish landlady Mrs. Hudson, to...
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What is a Minor Character: Understanding the Minor Characters’ Role
Not all characters are created equal.You must know—and let your readers know—which characters are most important to the story (i.e. the major characters), so they’ll know which are worth following and...
View Article7 Things That Will Doom Your Novel (& How to Avoid Them)
There are a lot of ways not to do something.Like the new boat owner a few years ago who was filling up his pleasure craft with fuel for that first time out. Only he mistook the tube meant to hold...
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The Horror Genre: On Writing Horror and Avoiding Clichés
“The three types of terror: The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it’s when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm. The...
View Article3 Tips for Consistent Tone
If you find yourself having a difficult time sustaining one tone over a long work, try these three tricks. 1. Find a paragraph that sounds exactly the way you want to sound for this work, and tape it...
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6 Things American Horror Story Can Teach Us About Writing
I think the general consensus among those writers who teach the craft is that you must read—and read widely—about the craft of writing, particularly those authors who write in your genre. But I think...
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The 5 Biggest Fiction Writing Mistakes (& How to Fix Them)
The best fiction writers write like they’re in love—and edit like they’re in charge. First drafting should be a wild and wonderful ride, full of discovery, dreams and promises. But at some point you...
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Rewriting the 7 Rules of Dialogue
Most of us have heard the typical advice about writing dialogue—make sure your characters don’t all sound the same, include only what’s essential, opt for the word said over other dialogue tags, and so...
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The Difference Between Character Habits And Quirks
The dictionary definitions overlap and vary which makes it unclear and difficult to understand, especially for new writers just testing their character creation toes in the water. The Oxford English...
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10 Ways To Hook Your Reader (and Reel Them in for Good)
There are authors who have such fantastic first lines that they grab reader’s interest from the very first line. Take Jeffrey Eugenides for example: “On the morning the last Lisbon daughter took her...
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How to Write From the Opposite Gender’s Point Of View
Every fiction writer has to write across gender lines. I should know. I’m a fantasy / science fiction writer, and though my stories are populated with vampires, robots, and space squids, there tend to...
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Write Like Stephen King: How to Create Scary Monsters
Monsters are more than just things that bite. What do they represent? What makes them scary beyond the physical threat—if there’s a physical threat at all? Let’s begin with a few basic assumptions...
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10 Rules of Writing a Novel
As you may have read while surreptitiously checking your tweet stream at a client meeting last week, a former advertising copywriter is among five Americans who made it onto the long list for a big,...
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Why Point of View is So Important for Novel Writers
The narrator’s relationship to the story is determined by point of view. Each viewpoint allows certain freedoms in narration while limiting or denying others. Your goal in selecting a point of view is...
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