Why does your protagonist shy away from military men? Why does your hero think all beautiful women are snobs? Why is your antagonist determined to destroy the protagonist’s career? The answers to these questions are motivations for your characters’ behavior. It’s what drives them to do things they otherwise wouldn’t do—often against common sense—therefore, we […]
Revision Prompt – Sentence Spacing
You’ve heard of writing prompts, now we have revision prompts! Each prompt will give you a specific writing issue to check for in your WIP, along with tips on how to fix each. Going through this process one issue at a time will not only help polish your current novel but will also teach you specific ways to […]
Revision Prompt – That vs. Who
You’ve heard of writing prompts, now we have revision prompts! Each prompt will give you a specific writing issue to check for in your WIP, along with tips on how to fix each. Going through this process one issue at a time will not only help polish your current novel but will also teach you specific ways to […]
Revision Prompt – Too Many Characters at Once
You’ve heard of writing prompts, now we have revision prompts! Each prompt will give you a specific writing issue to check for in your WIP, along with tips on how to fix each. Going through this process one issue at a time will not only help polish your current novel but will also teach you specific ways to […]
Revision Prompt – Changing Paragraphs
You’ve heard of writing prompts, now we have revision prompts! Each prompt will give you a specific writing issue to check for in your WIP, along with tips on how to fix each. Going through this process one issue at a time will not only help polish your current novel but will also teach you specific ways to […]
Using Motivation-Reaction Units to Change Telling into Showing
Showing your story to your readers instead of telling it is a cardinal rule in fiction writing, yet much easier said than done. One very effective way to change telling into showing is a concept called motivation-reaction units (MRUs). What are MRUs? They were first introduced by Dwight V. Swain, in his book Techniques of the Selling […]
The Dot-to-Dot Method of Plotting a Story
Writing is a very personal activity, and there are probably as many “methods” of writing as there are authors. What works for one person may not work for someone else. In some instances–such as the outliner vs. the seat-of-the-pants writer–methods can be complete opposites, yet they both get the job done for different sets of […]
Revision Prompt – The Extraneous Word “Just”
You’ve heard of writing prompts; now we have revision prompts! Each prompt will give you a specific writing issue to check for in your WIP, along with tips on how to fix each. Going through this process one issue at a time will not only help polish your current novel but will also teach you specific ways to […]
Choosing Your Story’s Beginning
In last week’s article, we introduced the three points in a story’s timeline which are sometimes referred to as the inciting incident. All three are points that upset the main character’s life: the first opens the door to your story’s plot, the second is the first step along the plot’s path, and the third closes the […]