Category: novel planning

  • Friday’s Findings: Where Are You With Your Writing Goals?

    Friday’s Findings: Where Are You With Your Writing Goals?

    It’s hard to believe it’s June already. Where are you with your writing goals for this year? Fiction University: Choose the Setting for Your Short Story: Location, Weather, Atmosphere (janicehardy.com)provides guidance on selecting the right setting elements to enhance the overall impact of your short story. When to Use Semicolons: 4 Rules and Examples (reedsy.com)offers…

  • Friday’s Findings: Do We Really Need Story Structure?

    Friday’s Findings: Do We Really Need Story Structure?

    I just finished Stephen King’s On Writing. Once again. I’m still flabbergasted that one of the best-selling authors in American history doesn’t endorse story structure. And I also just listened to a fiction writing seminar with Lisa Cron. In it, she reiterated what she says in her book, Story Genius, to begin with the story.…

  • Friday’s Findings: Plot and Story

    Friday’s Findings: Plot and Story

    I’ve been trying to wrap my head around the concepts of the difference between plot and story. The simplest, bare-bones definitions is this: plot is what happens on the surface and story is what happens on the inside. Plot is the physical action and events. Story is the internal thoughts, themes and conflicts of the…

  • How These Writers Faced Their Challenges

    How These Writers Faced Their Challenges

    11 top writers on their greatest writing challenges and how they overcome their demons . . . Right click and hit save as to download and read. Photo by Andrea Piacquadio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-in-red-tank-top-jumping-on-obstacle-3763879/

  • Friday’s Findings: How to Write Fast

    Friday’s Findings: How to Write Fast

    Some writers imagine the writing process as slow and meticulous. They take their time composing that first draft, lingering over it for months, maybe years. These writers are tortoises and they don’t mind. However, in How to Write Fast by Sean Platt and Neeve Silver, the writing process is the hare, not the tortoise. They…

  • NaNoWriMo Day 30: Some resources to check out

    NaNoWriMo Day 30: Some resources to check out

    No two writers approach their WIPs in the same way. Over the years, I’ve used a combination of the following methods to develop my stories. You may be familiar with some of them. Some of them may be new. I cherry pick parts from them and have created an amalgam of a fiction creating process…

  • NaNoWriMo Day 29: Seeking the senses

    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…

  • NaNoWriMo Day 28: Over the finish line

    NaNoWriMo Day 28: Over the finish line

    I wrote the last 2800 words yesterday and reach 50K. I won NaNoWriMo 2022!  My project is called Normous, and it’s a novella. It is the fifth episode in my series I call Consortium. In my blog posts throughout this month, I described how I outlined Normous in three steps, and then spent the rest…

  • NaNoWriMo Day 27: Home Stretch

    NaNoWriMo Day 27: Home Stretch

    Two milestones yesterday: I reached 45k words. And I finally did a 6k day. I did several sprints all day long. Most were 30 minute sprints and a couple were 45 minute sprints. And I still managed to get non-writing stuff done. In between writing sprints, I would exercise for 15-20 minutes. Or I would…