Writing Resources Category
Writing Unforgettable Fiction—Part I
Posted on July 1, 2015 3 Comments
A year ago, when I finished my Craftsman class with DiAnn Mills, she recommended I get a book entitled Story Trumps Structure, by Steven James. I finally ordered it last week. Its tagline is How to Write Unforgettable Fiction by Breaking the Rules. I haven’t read it all yet, but I’ve been skimming. This is […]
Putting Fire in Your Fiction–Part V
Posted on June 24, 2015 Leave a Comment
The last few weeks, we’ve been looking in-depth about how to insert tension into every scene, because without it, the scene falls flat. We’ve looked at tension in dialogue, in exposition, action, hyping up low-tension scenes, and today, we’ll look at creating tension where there is none.
Putting Fire in Your Fiction–Part IV
Posted on June 17, 2015 Leave a Comment
Last time, we talked about tension. Tension is the most necessary ingredient in any fiction you write. Click to tweet. Using Donald Maass’ The Fire in Fiction as a resource, we covered Tension in Dialogue, Tension in Action, and Tension in Exposition. Today, we’ll look at sprucing up low-tension scenes and avoiding the traps.
Writing Resource–Plot & Structure Part III Character Arc
Posted on June 3, 2015 Leave a Comment
“Great plots have great characters. While this is not a book on character creation and implementation, we can’t let the subject of plot go without touching on at least one aspect of character work that is all important: character change.
Putting Fire in Your Fiction–Part II
Posted on May 27, 2015 Leave a Comment
Since I’m always on a quest to learn more and share it with you, I’ll share a bit from Chapter 1, Protagonists vs. Heroes. My focus will be something that challenged me when I wrote “Meghan’s Choice.” My first incarnation of Meghan Gallagher was that she was a spoiled brat who felt entitled. I know, […]
Writing Resource–Plot & Structure–Part II
Posted on May 20, 2015 2 Comments
Chapter 5–Middles We’ve all heard about “the middle” of a story and usually what we hear is that it sags, stalls, and slumps. It doesn’t seem to move the story along or go anywhere. James Scott Bell addresses this in chapter five of Plot & Structure. The middle is typically known as Act II. In […]
Research–Imperative for Writers
Posted on May 6, 2015 Leave a Comment
Whether writing fiction or non-fiction, research is the most important thing we do. Movies and television seem to be able to “get away with” not being accurate or getting their facts straight. And maybe in the past, writers could as well. Not anymore. But the thing about fiction is that you can away with fudging […]
Putting Fire in Your Fiction
Posted on April 22, 2015 Leave a Comment
The tagline to Donald Maas’ The Fire in Fiction is “passion, purpose, and techniques TO MAKE YOUR NOVEL GREAT.” The book covers everything from characterization, the story world, scenes, dialogue, and voice. Each chapter has a set of practical tools dealing with each section from that chapter. As an example, I’ll talk about Chapter Three, […]
Plots That Dance – Part I
Posted on March 12, 2015 Leave a Comment
I spotlighted this book, The Dance of Character & Plot, a few months ago in an interview with my Craftsman mentor, DiAnn Mills. You can check out that interview here. Now, I’m going to shine that spotlight on one part of the book, Chapter Seven. Here’s her opening statement: “We all want our novels to […]
Writer’s Resource – The Sell Your Novel Tool Kit
Posted on March 5, 2015 Leave a Comment
By Elizabeth Lyon The publishing world has changed in the last number of years. This book was originally published in 1997, but came out as a paperback in 2002. Publishing has changed a lot in twelve years, but there is still a lot to be gleaned from this book. The subtitle is “Everything you need […]
Donna L.H. Smith 