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Quieter Protagonists: 3 Ways to Help Them Steal the Stage
While readers love to see larger-than-life characters with passion, take-charge attitudes, and heaps of boldness and daring, not every protagonist wears an extrovert skin. In fact, looking at real-life...
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Dive Deep with Emotion
Hi all! One of my favorite people is here today: Christina Delay of Cruising Writers. She’s got a great post on how to write deep emotion, so please read on! Don’t you just love feedback from...
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Choosing the Right Details
It’s my personal opinion that getting the words down on paper is the easy part, because at that point, the details don’t matter. Just throw a bunch of words down and take care of the specifics in the...
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How To Accurately Write About Your Character’s Pain
The best thing about this online world of ours is you never know who you are going to meet. I don’t know about you, but one of the areas I struggle with is writing a character’s pain in a way that is...
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Introducing One Stop For Writers’ Worldbuilding Tool
We’ve all read amazing fiction where the world itself captivated us as much as the characters did. And let’s all admit it, when we hit the last page of the final book in the series, a little piece of...
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Keep It Fresh: 10 Ways To Show Your Character’s Emotions
Years ago, Becca and I grumbled about how our characters always expressed emotion the same way. My big thing? Frowning. Did my characters EVER know how to frown. They were savage at it. Becca’s...
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Making Characters Stuck in the Background Pop Out
Maybe you have had some of the experiences I’ve had when writing a manuscript, one of which is finding yourself with a character–could be a side character, a secondary character, or even a viewpoint...
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Getting Jiggy with the Nitty Gritty, or, Improving Your Sentences
As writers we spend most of our time torn between needing to write and needing to market what we’ve written. Then, when we’re writing, our focus is often on improving our characters or the big picture...
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Want Memorable Characters? Focus on the Little Things
I love building characters. In fact, “building” is apt, because for me, they come a piece at a time. A brick or two might lock into place as I wrestle with that hateful night demon, Insomnia. Another...
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Three Ways The Setting Can Steer Your Story’s Plot
The setting is a powerful force. Not only does it evoke mood, create tension and conflict, allow you to share critical backstory in a non-dumpy way, and draw readers deeper into the story through...
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Quieter Protagonists: 3 Ways to Help Them Steal the Stage
While readers love to see larger-than-life characters with passion, take-charge attitudes, and heaps of boldness and daring, not every protagonist wears an extrovert skin. In fact, looking at real-life...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Dive Deep with Emotion
Hi all! One of my favorite people is here today: Christina Delay of Cruising Writers. She’s got a great post on how to write deep emotion, so please read on! Don’t you just love feedback from...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Context, Text, and Subtext: What They Are and How They Help Storytelling
In writing tips, we talk about text a lot. But I feel like we don’t talk enough about context and subtext in this industry. Both are vital to good storytelling and often misunderstood or even mixed up....
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The Key Components of a Compelling Character (According to Psychology)
We’re fascinated by our fellow humans. In fact, we have a profound desire to try and understand the thoughts and feelings bouncing around other people, the characters on TV…the hero introduced on your...
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Three Ways Writers Tell, Not Show (And How You Can Fix Them)
One of my favorite writing coaches is here with us to dish some helpful advice on Show and Tell. Please welcome Janice Hardy and read on… Show, don’t tell, is drilled into every writer’s head, and most...
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The Easiest Way to Plan Characters for a Series
This spring, Becca and I released two very important tools for writers… The Emotion Thesaurus 2nd edition (expanded by 55 entries) and a Character Builder Tool at One Stop for Writers. These two...
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Digging Deep: The Psychology of a Layered Story
Humans like complexity; puzzles, questions, layers. It fascinates us. My guess it’s because there are so many complex systems in nature that our brain needs to navigate successfully. Ecosystems,...
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World-building: Creating a Credible Magic System
Hi everyone! Today we have a new face at the blog: author and ghostwriter Justin Attas. He’s in love with world-building and has some great ideas on how to ensure the magic systems we create are...
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How to Craft Engaging Dialogue Exchanges
One of the best places to reveal your character’s emotions is during dialogue. Author Peter Gelfan joins us with some great considerations on how to make these exchanges more powerful, drawing readers...
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When Telling, Not Showing, Emotion is the Right Choice
Hi everyone! A past resident writing coach is visiting us with an excerpt on a new course she’s teaching on mastering emotions: C.S. Lakin. This post is a touch longer than usual but it will give you...
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