Category: Writing

Anatomy of a Best-Selling Novel—Structure Part One

The normal world’s connect to the…inciting incident. Inciting incident’s connected to the…turning point. The turning point’s connected to the…next act….and here’s the bones of your boooooook. Okay, I promise to stop singing…for now :D. Want a way to stand out from all the other writers clamoring to get an agent’s attention? Want to be a …

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Little Darlings & Why They Must Die…for REAL

Almost any of us who decided one day to get serious about our writing, read Stephen King’s On Writing. Great book, if you haven’t read it. But one thing King tells us we writers must be willing to do, is that we must be willing to, “Kill the little darlings.” Now, King was not the …

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Great Characters–The Beating Heart of Great Fiction

Today we are going to talk about character, but I want you guys to breathe and relax. Give yourselves permission to not know everything. Art is not one of those things that we take a few lessons and “graduate” as experts. True artists never stop learning. We read, take classes, and always push ourselves to …

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What Star Wars "A New Hope" Can Teach Us About In Medias Res

On Friday we talked about using setting as a literary device. Setting is one of those tools that helps writers to do more showing than telling. Today, we are going to tackle a highly confusing subject for many writers—In medias res. In medias res quite literally means in the middle of things. This is a literary tactic that …

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Setting–Adding Dimension to Your Fiction

Social media is an amazing tool, and it is a wonderful time to be a writer, but, I am going to point out the pink elephant in the room. We still have to write a darn good book. If we don’t write a darn good book, then no amount of promotion can help us. Sorry. …

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