Happy Halloween — and more importantly, happy Nanowrimo Eve! With the very best month of the year just hours away, the anxiety is setting in for many. What, you may wonder, in the name of all that is good, were you thinking signing up for this thing? Worse still, all anyone will tell you is… Continue reading Nanowrimo advice that will actually help you win
Playlists are the secret sauce of both productivity and time-wasting when it comes to most people’s writing process. The right background music can drop you effortlessly into the world of your novel, and before you know it, the words just come flying out. Creating a writing playlist, on the other hand, can be a happy… Continue reading How to curate the perfect writing playlist
Ah, the first draft. The first step on the long staircase to publication, held together with the writing equivalent of duct tape and prayers. If you squint, it looks like a novel, but it’s never quite what you thought it would be, is it? It’s almost Nanowrimo time, meaning that millions of people about to… Continue reading Everything you need to know about first drafts
Do you ever start something and then kind of forget you were doing it and accidentally abandon it for months? Me too. Welcome back to my writing blog (she said to herself, shaking her head in disappointment). As it happens, I haven’t only been taking an extended break from blogging, but also from writing itself.… Continue reading How to get the most out of writing prompts
Despite having taken every single literature class I had the opportunity to take throughout high school, I was well into college before I ever heard the term “diegesis.” I can only assume this is because my high school teachers were afraid of having to explain it. I completely sympathize with this. It’s a great word… Continue reading Diegesis: breaking down the most confusing term in literature
People have really strong opinions about tense. I know this because I write mostly in the present tense, which means I get to experience the full force of people ranting about how awful present tense is. I, as you might gather, respectfully disagree. I also think people get tense wrong more broadly – what it’s… Continue reading Present tense? Past tense? Here’s how to choose!
Nothing scares people like first chapters, and there’s a good reason for that. From a marketing perspective, it’s the highest-stakes part of your book. If you’re going the traditional publishing route, this is the first – and in many cases, only – glimpse of your work that agents and publishers are going to see. It’s… Continue reading The ultimate first chapter checklist
People always ask you what your favorite quote is – nobody ever asks you what your least favorite quote is. And they should! It’s a way more interesting question. Well, since nobody asked, mine is Game of Thrones writer David Benioff’s “Themes are for eighth grade book reports.” The show was not even on my… Continue reading How to give your book a theme that really sticks
In honor of the April session of Camp Nanowrimo kicking off tomorrow, today we’re going to talk about a topic very near and dear to my heart: the debate over plotting vs. pantsing. If you’ve participated in Nanowrimo or any of its associated events before, you have almost definitely run across this, and probably gotten… Continue reading Plotting vs. pantsing, and why you should do neither
I have a confession to make: plot structure scares the crap out of me. Of all the problems and pitfalls and mistakes a writer can make, the ones that have to do with how your story is structured are by far the hardest to deal with. They’re insidious in that it’s often very difficult to… Continue reading How to fix your plot structure