I confess! I swiped this Body Language Cheat Sheet for Writers from Archtype Writing.com–a website that bills itself as “The Fiction Writer’s Guide to Psychology” … but they told me I could reproduce it freely for educational purposes, so I guess that keeps things legal. Either way, it was too good to pass up because [...]
Heroes
January 11, 2013 By Leave a Comment
What is a hero? In writing, the hero (or heroine) is the main character of the story–the person the story is about. And we already know that a story is about someone with a problem — someone who wants something but can’t quite get it until they face the obstacle that stands in their way [...]
The XYZs of Story Writing – Part Two of Three
December 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Continuing in our series of 3 basic aspects of story writing, we move on to “Y”… The “Y” of Story Writing When I think of the letter Y, I also think of the question why. The letter y reminds me to ask a host of questions as I write. Why? How? When? What? — or [...]
Rough Drafting
November 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment
November is National Novel Writing Month, most often referred to as NaNoWiMo or NaNo. I’m typing my way toward 50,000 words to create part of a novel rough draft. Did you catch the last two words in that sentence? ROUGH DRAFT Much of what I’ve written will, and should, disappear during an editing phase. As [...]
The Right Kind of Drama in the First Five Pages
October 26, 2012 By Leave a Comment
(…Yes, there’s a Wrong Kind.) If there’s one big place to easily make mistakes in setting up scene, it’s in the beginning pages of a novel. Of course, as story-tellers, our desire is to grip our readers with something memorable in those first five pages — something dramatic. We’ve all been told how important it [...]
