You read that correctly!
Once I’ve finished the Elemental Series, I’m heading back to the wide-open seas and giving you something that numerous readers have reached out to beg me for:
Aven’s story!
Tag Archives: Writing
Inventing That Interesting Secondary Character
I love a good secondary character. If the main characters are the meat of your story, the secondary characters are the seasoning that flavor it and give it spice and their relationships to the major characters are what give the story its depth.
Not only can they add comedic relief (like the lovestruck first mate, Mr. Barton in Eight Nights At Sea or Useless the cat in Someday in Dublin) but they can also give you an extra punch in the heart (like Sami – the young girl who idolizes my heroine in my newest novel, Windsinger).
Resource Thursday: Writing The Damn Book #amwriting #writing
Nina Amir tells us how to write a good book in 30 days. (This entire site has a lot of good resources, as well)
Thoughts about “Thought Verbs” from Chuck Palahniuck, author of “Fight Club.”
The Shape of Stories by Kurt Vonnegut
And finally, here’s one of my favorite paragraphs about writing:
“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage them with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums. The crash of the cymbals – sounds that say listen to this, it is important.”
-Gary Provost
What To Do When You Get A Bad Review
It’s going to happen.
You don’t hunt your critic down and bash them over the head with a wine bottle, no matter how badly you’d like to do just that. You don’t have to like it. In fact, you can really, really be upset about it.
But then you need to back off, and look at it for what it is.
Was any of the criticism constructive? Can you learn anything from it? If they found a certain part of the book dull or a certain character unbelievable or a certain plot twist too predictable or outlandish – was there some merit in that? Be honest. Take notes. Look at whatever you’re working on now with fresh eyes. It’s all a learning process. Continue reading
Notepads And Post-Its And Scribbles On Napkins – Writing Can Be Messy Business
I have books all over the place.
I’ve learned (as I’ve become stronger and more prolific with my writing) that getting a glimmer of an idea is gold. Closing your eyes as you lay in bed or changing the radio dial as you’re at the wheel of your car or reaching for the spatula as you’re fixing dinner and telling yourself “I’ll have to remember that for later” is one of the stupidest damn things you can do as a writer.
You probably won’t remember it. At the very least, you won’t remember every juicy nuance of it, not like you will when it’s fresh in your brain.
I’ve had some amazing, bestselling ideas slip away from me like that. At least, I think they were. I’ll never know now because I don’t remember what the hell they were, other than they were brilliant. Goddammit. Continue reading
Resource Thursday: Social Media Navigation & Marketing #writingtips #writing
Today we’re going to talk about social media. UGH.
Really. Just…ugh.
It’s a necessary evil, and even entertaining a lot of the time, but the truth is it takes time and energy and focus that you’d really rather be putting toward your writing, if you had your ‘druthers. Still, there are great tools out there that help you build and engage with your audience, and you’re a fool if you don’t take advantage of them.
Here are a few resources that have really helped me as I navigate my way through the social media maze:
The Social Media Cheat Sheet – INCREDIBLY helpful guide to picture sizes and formatting constraints on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
5 Low-Cost Social Media Marketing Strategies for Authors – Great if you don’t have a lot of money to throw at a marketing program.
102 Hashtags Smart Writers Are Using – I started using some of these faithfully and doubled my Twitter following with people solidly in my target demographic very quickly.
17 Tools That’ll Take Your Social Media Marketing To The Next Level – A list of various downloads and apps that can help you with content and scheduling.
Dan Pearce’s 100 Blogging Tips – Dan is a blogger with a strong viral presence, and his tips are spot-on if you want to build and engaging blog.
Now go forth and be retweeted, reblogged, liked, pinned, hashtagged and hopefully…read!
It’s Not The Destination, It’s The Journey. Wish I Had Both.
My stories come to me in a myriad of ways.
Sometimes it’s a sliver of a remembered dream. Or I was people-watching and somebody fascinated me. Or I was mulling over something for another story and a new story ambushed my brain and took off with it.
That happens entirely too often.
And then I hit the quandry and one of two things happens: Continue reading
Resource Thursday: NaNo Madness? Bring On The Generators! #amwriting #NaNoWriMo
I will admit here and now that I haven’t used a generator…yet.
But I was clued into these by a writer friend and as I’ve done my research it turns out a lot of writers love generators – not to give them the exact idea, mind you, but as a good jumping off point. I have to admit as I perused these lists, I got some flickers of inspiration and ended up jotting down a half-dozen story and character ideas.
So here’s a list of several character, plot and content device generators that you might find enlightening: Continue reading
Random Thoughts And The Need To Record Them #amwriting #writing
When I first started outlining the Elemental Destiny series, I did a lot of research and wrote down a lot of random stuff. I wasn’t sure how much of it I could or would use – I just knew it could fit into the arc of the story, depending on which way I took certain characters or parts of the plot.
Some of these items were links to webpages with research or historical events that I could tie-in with the plot. Some was just random musings like “What if XXXX had an abusive relationship they escaped?” or “XXXX’s relationship with their parent will be critical.”
It’s important to let you brain free-form float like that when you’re hashing out a book because you never know where it will take you. And just as important as being random with your storyline is writing it all down.
Resource Thursday: Write The Right Words, Find The Right Structure
Writing is a struggle about finding the right word. Or string of words. You need to be able to convey, to describe, to paint, and do it all in as few unnecessary words as possible. Which is a whole lot easier than it sounds, believe me. So I’ve used these two, on occasion – and they do help:
The Wheel of Emotional Description
100 Ways To Say “Said” (and use this one sparingly – “Said” is still the best way to say something, but when you need occasional umph, another word may do better).
Then you have to put the words into some sort of structure. Here are three references that I’ve skimmed and gleaned from and applied in various ways: Continue reading
Britt DeLaney 