Recs
How to Double Your Story’s Conflict in Seconds by K.M. Weiland This is not the first time I’ve recommended an article by K.M. Weiland, and it probably won’t be the last. She has some great articles. Conflict is one of those areas that I’ve noticed (myself included) that authors struggle with. How much is too much? What if my readers get mad at me because...
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Diva Spotlight: Author A.C. Netzel A.C. Netzel asked me to read her book for my book blog, The Flirty Reader, and I really enjoyed it. What better way to showcase a new author then to make her a Diva Spotlight. Boom! Congratulations, A.C., you’re the latest book crush of the month. Tell all your friends! Hehe! The Causal Rule, is a contemporary romance set in...
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Welcome to the Write Divas Featured Writing Prompts & Exercises! With this rising temperatures in the northern hemisphere, a writing prompt that tackled the summer heat seemed like a good idea. This week the Divas would like you to use the picture below as inspiration for a writing prompt about the summer heat. How you spin it is up to you. The picture is merely one option...
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Character Consistency How many times have you been reading something and out of nowhere there’s an odd change to a character that comes with no explanation? Nothing inconsequential, of course—something substantial, like eye color or body type or a huge personality change that goes unexplained? Are you the type of reader who would notice that sort of thing? As an editor, I have to be. During...
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I know, I know. We’ve preached about how important it is to write an outline to your novel. I’ve told many of my authors when they are stuck that they should outline the rest of their story so they have a clear path to follow. I need an outline to finish a book, well, anything I write, truthfully. In this rec, Steven James shares with us...
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In this episode of Commonly Confused, I’m going to discuss the commonly confused pairs ascent/assent and descent/decent. Although dissent may have seemed a more likely choice, given its meaning, I find it’s not misused nearly as often as decent is in this situation. Let’s start at the bottom. From Merriam-Webster, ascent is the act of ascending or rising; a moving or mounting upward. In layman’s terms,...
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Featured Writing Exercises & Prompts Welcome to the Write Divas Featured Writing Exercises & Prompts! This week’s writing exercise is to create a scene where temptation is your character’s only vice. The temptation could range from things that your main character can’t resist, such as a cupcake on the counter to a seductive protagonist who can’t live without whips and chains. The point is to...
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Divas on Writing: Numbers in Writing How many of us think about numbers when we write a book? Not very many, I’d wager. But numbers do play a part in most books, whether it’s an address, street number, monetary terms, the time of day, etc. Numbers are a part of our lives, and so they are often a part of a novel. The rules for...
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Divas Recommend: Proofreading is not editing by Connie J. Jasperson Every once in a while an article comes along and just explains things perfectly. “Proofreading is not editing” by Connie J. Jasperson on her blog Life in the Realm of Fantasy is exactly that. When discussing proofreading, she reiterates that a proofreader is not there to edit; that’s been done already. A proofreader is a fresh...
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What is the three-act structure? It comes from Aristotle and is the basic plot structure for Greek tragedies. The simplest definition is, it is a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. A large majority of the good stories out there have this same structure. Why? Because it works. We recognize it as good storytelling whether we are aware of it or not....
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