May 30, 2022
June 4, 2022
If you’ve read my post on revising with a plan, you know I’m a big advocate of using story structure and plot beats to whip your […]
July 29, 2022
Stories are made up of character’s reactions to the outside world. They learn something new, they process that information, they react, and you’re off to the races! But writing that moment, that emotional transition where the character is processing new information, can be difficult. Quite often, they can be skipped over or stunted...
July 29, 2022
This may come as a surprise to some of you, but you don't always have to explicitly write out some of these beats. In fact, sometimes minimizing those moments can really help the pacing of your story! It really depends on the purpose of the beat you’re exploring. If the transition is...
August 13, 2022
Previously in this series, we’ve already covered how to structure a beat, and how those beats impact tension, pacing, and processing time for the reader. Since then, it’s been pointed out that my previous posts on beats only covered beats as experienced by the POV character. Well, this post is for all those poor non-POV characters I’ve accidentally excluded up until now. ..
August 15, 2022
Today's question goes like this. Throughout my whole story, my main character (MC) is headed toward one goal. Then, when they reach that goal, they "switch". to something else which has really been their goal all along...
August 17, 2022
Today's question goes like this. I've sunk over a year of my life into the draft of a novel. It's changed so much since it started. Now I'm to the point where I hate almost everything and want to take the world in a completely new direction...
August 18, 2022
If you’ve ever had your novel (especially genre fiction) critiqued by someone else, you’ve probably found that giant highlight which covers two-to-three paragraphs and is attached to a comment which only says “info dump”. The process of giving your readers all the information they need without “info dumping” is a hard one, but it doesn’t have to be. In this post, I’ll break down exactly what turns a paragraph of information into an “info dump”, how to avoid those things, and how to better dispense information throughout your novel.
August 25, 2022
Five tips to help you control narrative distance, whether you're writing in third person omniscient or third person limited.