Drafting – K. A. Excell

November 8, 2022

How to Survive a NaNoWriMo Plot Point Snare

It’s the beginning of the second week of NaNoWriMo and I, like many of you, am waist deep in a word pit of snarled sentences, tacky descriptions, hurried notes, and character motivations which make absolutely no sense. This week, instead of providing a beautifully sculpted piece of prose about the finer points of POV, plot, narrative style, or character development, I’m going to do my best to help you make sense of the word pit you’ve stumbled into and provide a quick few tips to help you keep your plot points straight, even when you're a quarter of the way through your draft and the plot points aren't what you thought. Are you ready?

November 14, 2022

Write-Life Balance

If you’re anything like me, you’ve been typing your fingers off, working toward the murky middle for which you have only a vague set of ideas—most of which are terrible. More than that, life might be starting to catch up with you. Work is piling up, housework hasn’t been done in two weeks, and you don’t have any more clean clothes because laundry has gone to the wayside in exchange for a few extra typing sessions. If any of this sounds familiar, the following post is for you.

November 21, 2022

A Quick Guide to the Major Plot Points

Hello Fellow Word-Nerds! For all of you Word-Nerds who are stuck right now, here’s a quick guide to the major plot points of a story. Sometimes, having a rough outline of all the things I have to do helps kickstart my writing, so maybe this will help you too!