Ah, November. National Novel Writing Month. I can almost smell the fresh office supplies, the hint of double espresso and sugar drifting on the wind. The beginning of November is full of hope, promise and inspiration, but by week two? ….yeah. I have been running a series on structure and sure structure has the obvious …
Tag: craft
Nov 01 2011
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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Oct 24 2011
Structure Part 4–Testing Your Idea–Is it Strong Enough to Make an Interesting Novel?
For the past month, we have been discussing story structure. Part I of this series introduced the novel on a micro-scale. Part II explored the big picture and offered an overview of common plot problems. Part III introduced the most critical element to any novel, the BBT (Big Boss Troublemaker). Each of these blogs builds upon the previous lesson, …
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Sep 19 2011
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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Sep 12 2011
Deadly Sin of Writing #7–Treating the Reader Like a Moron
I know I talked about this only a couple of months ago, and yes, you guessed it. This is my 7th Deadly Sin of Writing. As an editor, I found that I kept correcting the same blunders over and over and yeah…over. The mistakes were so universal among new writers that I finally put together …
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International Association of Professional Writers & Editors
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