Category: conflict

  • Friday’s Findings

    Friday’s Findings

    Semicolons. I think of them as the yellow on a traffic stoplight. But I admit it. I love using the semicolon. When I write a rough draft, I indulge my semicolon addiction, but when I self-edit, I have to rewrite most of the sentences where I use them. They are like spice; I use them…

  • Create More Conflict

    Create More Conflict

    See the infographic here.

  • Character Creations: Laying the Foundation

    Character Creations: Laying the Foundation

    I am having a blast creating characters for my NaNoWriMo project this year. I used some tools I haven’t applied in the past and I wanted to tell you about them. But first, a caveat: this is just for the beginning of character development. I believe in just laying a foundation for a character before…

  • Fleshing Out One-Dimensional Characters

    Fleshing Out One-Dimensional Characters

    NOTE: I dusted off some notes I took for a webinar, How to Revise Your NaNo Novel, from January 2016. Grant Faulkner hosted the segment on writing advice with guest speakers KM Weiland, James Scott Bell and Kami Garcia. The following was one of the questions asked. How do you take a one-dimensional character and…

  • What is the most important aspect of revision?

    What is the most important aspect of revision?

    NOTE: I dusted off some notes I took for a webinar, How to Revise Your NaNo Novel, from January 2016. Grant Faulkner hosted the segment on writing advice with guest speakers KM Weiland, James Scott Bell and Kami Garcia. The following was one of the questions asked. What is the most important aspect of revision?…

  • My Fiction Writing Toolkit

    My Fiction Writing Toolkit

    When I write, I motivate myself by reviewing some of my Fiction Writing Tools. For some reason they get me going. Below are articles from this blog that are sure to motivate you: Character Character Workshop Temptations to Avoid Conflict Conflict Workshop Description Describe an Object Ten Ways Dialogue Subtext Plot Hero’s Journey Three Act…

  • Temptations to avoid when writing characters

    I’ve had a great time getting to know the characters in my SF novel. A plethora of minor characters run around in my story, but I have three main ones: Bandonn FarPacer-Technology genius; while growing up, forced to fight a war on his home planet; escaped the war, and wants to be an agent for the…

  • Reading Roundup for 2016

    Here are most of the books I’ve read during 2016: Classics Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert…

  • Checklist for writing a scene

    Checklist for writing a scene

    When it came to my novel, I honestly didn’t think I’d have to do that. But, here I am, the stage of my novel where I am going over each scene, and I am “killing my darlings.” I want to keep most of the scenes, but I have a criteria I go over that may…