Blog – K. A. Excell

May 28, 2022

Revising With a Plan

One of the questions I see a lot (especially from writers coming out of NaNoWriMo) is how to write a second draft. I can’t answer this for everyone, because everyone has their own process which works for them. I can tell you about my process, and the process I recommend to clients.

May 30, 2022

Is Said Really Dead?

June 4, 2022

The Debate Around Story Structure

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

Beats Part I: How to Structure a Beat

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

Beats Part II: When and How to Use Beats

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

Beats Part III: Structuring Beats for Non-POV Characters

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

Question of the Day: Bait and Switch

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

Question of the Day: Starting Over

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

Info Dumps: what they are, how they work, and how to avoid them

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.