Story beginnings are challenging. On the one hand, you’ve got all the excitement of getting to know your characters and their dilemmas for the first time, and you haven’t yet hit the point where flaws begin to raise their thorny heads. Ah, young love! On the other hand, those first-draft opening pages are seldom the…
Hello! Now, I’m going to say some controversial things, but please, please, don’t clutch your pearls in horror after I say them. OK. Are you ready? I LOVE a robust outline. When some people write outlines for their novels, they’re essentially talking about some short hand notes they made, their vision for the ending and…
We authors can be overwhelmed when deciding how much money we should spend, and where, in order to get customers to spend money on our book. Let’s be candid. Most new and independent authors set aside idealistic expectations of initial profit and focus on exposure, ratings, reviews, and the ability to quickly turn these aspects…
After listening to a speaker tout the merits of character growth, I pondered its importance in a short story. I published quite a few stories before realizing I hadn’t considered whether any of my characters actually “grew” or not. I puzzled over my working cadre of short stories and asked myself if any of those…
Plotter. Pantser. Is your writing style ingrained? Can you change it? I’ve wrestled with this question since the beginning of my career, and I know several other authors who’ve had the same struggle. I started out as a pantser (which I prefer to call “writing into the mist” or intuitive writing) mostly because I didn’t…