Category: Writing

Structure Part 5–Keeping Focused & Nailing the Pitch–Understand Your "Seed Idea"

Today is the start of National Novel Writing Month. Yay! I hope those of you participating will take some time to read these posts on structure to help maximize your chances of success. Normally I blog about craft on Monday, but we had a special guest abduction interview with Nationally Best-Selling Author James Scott Bell. So …

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Structure Part 2–Plot Problems–Falcor the Luck Dragon & the Purple Tornado

Last week we began a series discussing structure and, if you haven’t read last Monday’s blog, I strongly recommend checking it out. Each of these blogs will build upon the previous lesson. By the end of this series, I hope you to give you guys all the tools you need to be “structure experts.” If you …

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Structure Part 1–Anatomy of a Best-Selling Novel–Structure Matters

We are into October and National Novel Writing Month is around the corner (November–NaNoWriMo). Thus, I am running my structure series to help you guys get prepared. Why write 50,000 words if, at the end you have an unpublishable mess? Some of you might have seen these lessons, but a good refresher can’t hurt. Writers …

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The Doctor is in the House–Novel Diagnostics

We’ve spent the past several weeks talking about my Deadly Sins of Writing, which are seven newbie mistakes that interfere with our fiction. “Was” clusters and ellipses overkill are distracting, and POV shifts just make us want to lie down until the dizziness passes. Ah, but once you have successfully removed the offending sins, you …

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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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