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Setting – A Force In Your Story Setting is like a character in your story that has no dialogue. Setting not only grounds your characters and your readers, setting interacts with characters to enhance your story. Setting is what makes readers feel like they are there.Beginning writers often overlook the depth that setting adds to a…
Readers Want One Thing From a Scene – Change Scenes are the building blocks of your story. Each scene moves the story forward and shed a no light on the main character. Each scene is a mini-story with the same overall sequence as the main story—beginning, middle, end. Within that mini-story a change happens. …
Harness Your Story Idea to Write a Better Novel When a writer has a new story idea, you spend time thinking about your novel before you ever start writing. You’ll do bits of research. You’ll brainstorm how the story will work. You hear the voices of different characters. You think about what the book is…
Shortcuts to Writing Like A Pro You can avoid new writer traps that mark you as a beginner. Professional writing is geared toward readers. Anything that draws the reader out of the story and calls attention to your writing is not worth it.Writing craft takes practice. The benefit for you is that your story is…
Photo by pulkit jain on Unsplash How To Meet The Challenge of Editing Your Manuscript As a novel writer, the editing process seems mysterious, daunting, and unmanageable when you view it through your creative writer lens. You are right, manuscript editing requires a different mindset and separate skills.If you approach editing with a perspective that…
Tips to Draw Your Reader Into Your Mystery Create a mystery that gives your reader opportunities to play and active part in unveiling the suspect. Mindset and Methods Beginning writers often are so involved in the process of creating a novel, they forget the reader. Readers are an author’s lifeblood. They post reviews which are…
Tips to Make Supporting Characters Suspicious Supporting characters are rich tools for misdirecting your sleuth. Characters because of their secrets, lies, and coverups lead the sleuth down trails that are dead ends. How to Make Innocent Suspects Look Guilty When you observe people, you’ll notice actions and dialogue that you can use in your mystery. Keep…
Find The Victim’s Secrets in Your Mystery The victim is a strategic character in your mystery. Spend just as much time developing this character as you do your protagonist and the villain. Even though your victim is dead or soon dead, they are the character around whom the story revolves. The crime against the victim…
Image source: Wikimedia How Does Your Protagonist Stack Up? You know your protagonist. Presenting your favorite character to the reading public and differentiating him or her to readers is challenging. You want your readers to like your protagonist as much as you do.I decided to do a little experiment. I chose some relevant or similar…
The Mini-Story that Builds Your Novel Each scene is a building block to your story. And, each scene is a mini-story with the same components as the main story. A central character An obstacle A setting An emotional arc A beginning, middle, and end But the scene has one more function: Move the story forward…
