Category: description
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Warning: No Info Dumping, Part 2
In my last blog entry, I talked about the dos and don’ts of info-dumping. Now, I’d like to offer some case studies of info-dumping in action. While these may exaggerate info-dumps in action, they can still cause the writer to ask herself, ‘Have I done this?’ Info-dumps mostly pop up in these areas of description…
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Friday’s Findings: The Recipe for Interiority
There’s this new term I’ve come across in the fiction craft world: interiority. I had never heard of it until last year when I took Mary Kole’s online class called Crafting Dynamic Characters. Great class. As far as using it as a writing craft term, I don’t know who coined interiority, but Kole built her…
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Sit and Quiet Yourself
“Sit and quiet yourself. Luxuriate in a certain memory and the details will come. Let the images flow. You’ll be amazed at what will come out on paper. I’m still learning what it is about the past that I want to write. I don’t worry about it. It will emerge. It will insist on being…
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Friday’s Findings: The Perfect Story?
This week, I came across some articles that go over the basics of fiction: story elements, types of characters and the three act story structure. I also came across Writer’s Digest’s 50 best websites for writers in 2023. Elements of Fiction: A Quick Guide to Writing the Perfect Story – Kotobee Blog A refresher on…
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Friday’s Findings
Prologues vs. Flashbacks Backstory is something I’ve been thinking about lately and this article answered a lot of questions. How to Read Like a Writer (to become a better writer) Five simple steps to reading a book and noticing techniques writers use to make readers want to finish the book. 5 Ways to Write Better…
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NaNoWriMo Day 29: Seeking the senses
On Thanksgiving Day, I accompanied my mom and her husband to volunteer at a church serving T-day meals to the homeless and low-income families. It was a nice break from working on my NaNoWriMo project. The three of us ending up on the team of volunteers who picked up paper plates and cups from those…
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NaNoWriMo Day 22: Starting with dialogue
When I start a scene, if I’m not sure what to write to start things off, I go to my default: dialogue. Then I add in some physical actions followed by interior thoughts and emotions. Then I layer in some description – I make sure the reader knows what the characters look like as close…
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NaNoWriMo Day 4: the 2nd step
I’m done with steps 1 and 2 of my writing process. I’ll be spending the next week marching through step 3 which is expanding my scene paragraph summaries into 5 paragraphs. These 5 paragraphs are a brain dump of details I may or may not include down the road: scraps of descriptions, dialogue, interior monologues…
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NaNoWriMo Day 2: My four-steps
Was my first day of NaNoWriMo 2022 was a huge success? I wrote over 1700 words. The story is coming along wonderfully and I’ve come up with some ideas as I’ve composed. During Preptober, I made a list of phrases describing scenes. I also compiled a list of characters for the two novellas I’m writing…
Andrew M. Friday 