Category: Writing Tips
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How To Plan Your Short Story (+ Free Planning Workbook!)
Effectively and efficiently prepare to write your short story and set yourself up for success.
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How I Stay Inspired to Write (Even During a Pandemic)
Writing is like a relationship: you have to put effort in to keep the spark alive. If you don’t feed your love for writing, your inspiration well dries up, and it becomes difficult to continue creating. But how do we make sure our well runneth over? Writers, that’s what we’re talking about today.
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10 Warning Signs of Amateurish Writing & How to Fix Them
As writers, the last thing we want to do is appear amateurish.
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20 High-Stake Subplot Ideas That Aren’t Romantic
Subplots are my jam! Most of my stories are like 80% subplot. I like them because they don’t conform to the basic rules of main plotlines; you get more creative liberty.
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How to Make a Character’s Death Heartbreaking (2019 edition)
Though I killed off a lot of characters back then, I wasn’t careless: it was all intentional. Those deaths moved the plot forward, as any character death should, and had been placed strategically. But what were those strategies? How did I kill off characters so meaningfully, it hurt the reader while still advancing the plot?…
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5 Tiny Tricks That Improve Your Writing Instantly
Often I’ll see a writing tip that sounds great, until I think about it and realize, “Well, it sounds simple, but how do I even go about doing that?” These five tips aren’t like that. These are my favorite, most impactful tips, so basic that you can implement them into your own writing immediately. Sound…
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Writing a Prologue Your Reader Won’t Skip
Fun fact: writers love writing prologues. But readers hate having to read them! So what are you, a writer who loves prologues, going to do? Most advice you’ll find will tell you to avoid them at all costs. But there are better solutions, writers! Which is why I’ve written down my top 4 tips &…
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The Best Uses for Pinterest “Sections” for Writers
You have no idea how long I’ve waited for this update. (Here’s a hint: years.) As an organization nut, the thought of systematizing my Pinterest profile even further was magical. But unattainable. Think a unicorn. But that’s not a very good analogy, because unicorns weren’t added in a recent update. “Sections” were! So, based on that, we can…
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How Many Words Make a Novel?
Questions just about every writer has asked him- or herself: Just how many words does it take to make a novel? Is there a certain word-count? And how do I know if my novel is too short/long? If you are that writer, here is a quick, simplistic post for you, based entirely on the research…
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Why You Need an Ideal Reader (& How to Find Yours)
you definitely need an ideal reader. There isn’t any going around it, so please don’t try. I’ve said this in many other posts before, but here it is again: don’t write a novel for a broad audience. Write with one person in mind (i.e. an ideal reader) to make it deeper and more personal
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The Most Efficient Ways to Research Historical Fiction
Plan out your story, at least the bare basics like setting and main characters, writing down what you’ll need to research later on. Maybe keep a document on your phone, or a page in your journal. This, I believe, is the most effective way to avoid wasting your time on useless information. But how can…
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How to Build a Story from Nothing Using Pinterest
I’ve written about Pinterest story-boards a lot, and how much I enjoy making them. But all of those posts covered making boards for novels that already exist, or books you’d started planning beforehand. And it occurred to me: why not make a story-board for a story that hasn’t been written yet? That’s what we’re going…
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How I Became More Productive in My Writing
…Which is why I’m sharing this good news with you: I am doing so much better on my novel now. In the past 2-3 days, I’ve written thousands of words! That’s a pretty darn big deal for me. So, for the first time in months, I’m on track again! Right now, my goal is to have the novel…
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Plot Twist Ideas to Shock Your Reader
This is a rewrite of last year’s Plot Twist Ideas to Shock Your Reader. I referenced the original post for my own story (once my posts get old enough, I forget what I’d written 😉 ), but I didn’t find it very helpful. And thus, this rewrite was born! Not everything in this post is…
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9 Ways to be More Confident in Your Writing
Fun fact: the majority of my blog posts are totally unedited. I don’t even proofread! Any time I think I’m not confident enough in my writing, I remember this fun fact. Because if I really despised my writing so much, why on earth would I be plastering this online for the whole world to see?…
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Why Every Writer Needs to Have a Pinterest
Why has something as simple as Pinterest helped me grow as a writer? What are the real benefits of it? That’s exactly what we’re gonna talk about. I’ve written a few articles about Pinterest already, but those zero in on specific topics. Today we’re going to zoom out a little and take a look at…
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25 World-Building Questions to Deepen Your Fantasy World
I love writing fantasy. In all honesty, it’s probably my favorite genre (as far as writing goes, anyway). It’s the genre in which I always wrote when I was younger, so going back to it is like holding an old stuffed animal to your chest. It’s ragged, worn, and off-colored, but it smells like home.
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My Best Advice to Young Writers
Hey, writers! As someone who started writing young herself, I love connecting with other passionate young writers. And I often get asked about my best writing advice. Well, here is my best advice for young writers! Never be afraid of self-publishing. For some writers, self-publishing = evil. Yes, I will admit that it would be…
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5 Little Ways to Love Your Writing (And Why it’s Important)
Why is loving your writing so important? The way I see it, if you love your writing . . . 2. You’re more likely to finish your stories. 1. It shows, and it makes your writing better because of it. So today, we’re going to look at a few – five, to be exact! -…
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45+ Hobby Ideas For Your Characters
My favorite aspect to character creation: their everyday interests. A good interest adds a whole new piece to the character, making her more relatable, memorable, and compelling. The following list could work as hobbies, professions, and possibly even a secret passion, for your characters. For more ideas, try doing online searches for hobby ideas. Ready?…
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The Writer’s Guide to Fainting
Hi, writers! Here’s a post that’s a little different than usual, what with it being so full of medical facts: the writer’s guide to fainting (or passing out). Because I couldn’t number the books I’ve read that portray fainting scenes incorrectly, and I’ve seen so few tutorials on how to write them better. We’re going…
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How to Write a Story for Someone – a Step-by-Step Guide to Writing the Perfect Gift
It’s hard to buy gifts for people. Birthdays, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, you name it, I always have difficulty finding a present that is not only straight from the heart, but something they’ll remember and keep. That’s my goal with presents, anyway, and sometimes I cheat on that goal. I’m a victim of buying candles as…
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New to The World of NaNoWriMo? Here’s What You Need to Know
You’ve heard a lot of crazy things about writing in November. So you looked into it – maybe you asked a friend, maybe you Googled it – and discovered the details. Or maybe you haven’t looked into it much at all, but you love writing, and you’re intrigued. So what is this “NaNoWriMo” thing, anyway?…
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100 Writing Prompts That Are Definitely Not Boring
Why do we have writing prompts? Inspiration-gathering. Which is why I’m tired of plain old writing prompts that don’t spark the imagination. So here’s a whopping 100 prompts that are definitely, without a doubt, not boring. Trust me on this one, I did a quality test and removed the boring prompts. I encourage you to add your…
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Things to do when You’re Stuck in a Scene – the importance of keeping yourself and the readers interested
What keeps us coming back to our writing? For me, personally, I will only come back to my writing if I’m interested in the story and my characters; if I lose interest, or don’t know what I’m going to do next, I leave it. Think of it as reading a book: if the start is…
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How to Make a Character’s Death *Heartbreaking*
Asterisks for *emphasis.* I’ll be honest with you – a majority of the people who read my books tell me these same things: “Why did so-and-so have to die?!” “Noooo, how dare you kill off so-and-so!” It’s a pattern. And I’ve started to take notice of it. I wonder to myself, What exactly makes my characters’…
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3 Things that bore the Reader (and how to fix them)
When a reader gets bored, he closes the book. It happened to me just last night, when I was reading The Lightning Thief. That fight between Percy J. and Ares was really, really boring (which I will bring up again later). It’s disappointing from an author as great as Rick Riordan. As a writer, I know it is…
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How to Write a Book – from a published Amazon author
“You can make anything by writing.” – C.S. Lewis Writing a book is hard. It’s the honest truth for any and all writers – writing is hard. It takes weeks, maybe even months to write those 50 pages that the reader will finish in one sitting. Is the effort worth it?…
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Female Characters – what you’re doing wrong
Recently I read a book series with two important female characters; one of which was unnecessary, the other was a waste of great potential, and they both were just pieces in a stupid love triangle. No one likes jealous girls, people. After reading making that realization about those characters, I sat down and typed…
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20 One-Sentence Dialogue Prompts
(It’s been so long since I’ve posted anything! Just to recap, the only things that happened since my post on November 30th are both mine and my brother’s birthdays passing.) Sometimes I feel like the best writing prompts are the simple, one-sentence prompts. I find them most inspiring, and they can go in so many…
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How to write from the point of view of an animal
Writing about people (and the such) is generally the common POV authors work from. And of course they do; it’s easier to relate to a person than a bobcat. But for the younger age group, sometimes they’ll be more likely to pick up a book with an heroic young dog on the cover (I…
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How to edit your novel (because it needs to be AWESOME)
Writing a novel? Oh yeah, I’ve got tons of ideas and characters, and when my novel is famous, I’m going to sign my signature like this. This is going to be GREAT! Editing a novel? Kill me now. There are many things about writing novels that make writers groan (title, synopsis, character names, I…
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How I conquer the dreaded writer’s block.
Most posts like this [on other blogs and websites] say things like, “listen to music,” “change your location to write,” “go outside,” etc. etc. While these work fine (especially the first one; it works well for me), I have an even better solution that’s almost guaranteed to work every time. Write. Just writing yourself out…