For years now, I’ve preached about The Five Requirements of Story. It’s been a pillar I’ve stood on and has driven everything from the way I edit and coach, to my personal writing and marketing. As much as I’ve had faith in these requirements, there has always been a...
Ever heard of the grief cycle? Most of us have, and all of us have experienced it. According to Kubler-Ross, there are five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Formerly, the thought was that we cycle through these feelings one after the...
When you scroll through Pinterest or Instagram looking for ways to strengthen your characters, you may run into this common piece of advice: Give your character a quirk. According to dictionary.com, a quirk is a “peculiarity of action, behavior, or personality.” A...
Mystery or Romance? Sci-Fi or Fantasy? Literary or Non-sense? The single most important question asked is, “What’s my genre?” This can be a confusing topic for most contemporary writers. Your story is set in the future, contains a murder, and the protagonist gets...
One of the biggest frustrations I hear from new writers is that they can’t find the time to write. Because let’s face it, the writing and editing is the hard part, the imagining is where the fun is. For several months, life was tough. It was stressful, and it felt...
Mary Laura Philpott suggests that if we have a talent for something, we enjoy doing it. She also wonders if we get good at it because we enjoy it and if “talent” is really a thing. But what does it mean to have a talent for something? For our purposes, it means a...
“I want to hook my readers from the first sentence.” That’s something I hear A LOT, especially from new writers. It makes sense: readers want something to draw them into the story, and you want to deliver. But let me ask you this…what is the first line of the book...
So you got your manuscript back from your editor. Now what? The most important thing to remember is the issues in your story are not a reflection of who you are as a writer or a person. They don’t make you bad. Every author from Stephen King to Nora Roberts needs an...
NaNoWriMo is finally over, yay! Did you finish? Did you get to 50K…or more? Even if you didn’t but you still started a writing habit, congrats! That’s a big deal. Now that the highs and lows of a writing marathon are over, what’s next? My favorite part…editing! But...
You’re twelve days into NaNoWriMo. How are you feeling? The beginning of a project can be so much fun. There’s the novelty of it, the excitement to start something new, the drive to finish. Like most endeavors, that excitement, drive, and energy tend to wane about...
