One thing that will never change (aside from a world-ending asteroid strike) is humans LOVE a good story. One of the reasons I worked so hard to put together a simple plan for author branding is the writing needs to be paramount. Most writers, no matter which path they choose, do not see success on the first book. A standard tipping point is book THREE.
Category: Antagonist
Sep 17 2012
Black Swan–The Trick to Inner and Outer Demons
It’s now September and we are closing in on NaNoWriMo, so I am going to be posting on some core issues that stump many a new writer. Most new writers do not properly understand the antagonist, and that is a HUGE problem, namely because no antagonist, no story. The antagonist creates the story problem the …
Apr 23 2012
The Key Ingredient for Dramatic Tension–Understanding the Antagonist
Today I wanted to take some time to talk about the antagonist. Why? Well, not only is the antagonist THE most important character, but he is the most misunderstood as well. In fact, that is part of the reason I am teaching a class about understanding the antagonist at the DFW Writers Workshop Conference this …
Dec 05 2011
Is Your Novel a Spineless Weakling?
Now that NaNoWriMo is behind us, it is time to take a hard look at the 50,000 or so words we wrote. Is it really a story? Or is it 50,000 worth of organic goo that we can maybe perhaps grow into a story? Maybe some of you didn’t participate in National Novel Writing Month, …