Blog – Page 126 of 451

A Reverse To-Do List

March 27, 2015March 27, 2015Business of Writing

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I read an interesting post recently by blogger Jessica Lawlor (@jesslaw) “A Reverse To-Do List: Why What You Say NO to Matters More Than You Think.” It was one of those post titles that made me want to learn more, since I still struggle with protecting my time.

I have gotten much better about protecting my time. Last summer I mentioned that I had created a business manifesto and was measuring each opportunity against it…was the opportunity a true opportunity? Or was it a distraction from more important tasks?Continue reading

7 Smart Tactics for Describing a Character in First Person PoV

March 23, 2015March 23, 2015Writing Tips

by Alex Limberg, @RidethePen

Would you like to be an actor in your own crazy play, a play you can make up any minute as you go along? That’s basically what telling your story in first person is.

If your narrator is a character in your story, his point of view does come with a couple of limitations though: What your narrator knows, what he sees, what he feels all have to go through the filter of your character’s personality. You can’t switch perspectives and fly from location to location as easily as a neutral narrator, you can’t stay as invisible as a neutral narrator… in short, you lack superpowers!

This post aims to offer a bunch of solutions for one problem in particular: How do you describe somebody when you can’t see him because you are inside of him, looking out, and you don’t even have a reason to describe him? How can you tell your reader what your character looks like through his own eyes?Continue reading

Twitterific Writing Links

March 22, 2015March 21, 2015Twitterific, Writing Tips

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Twitterific writing links are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search engine (developed by writer and software engineer Mike Fleming) which has over 30,000 free articles on writing related topics. It’s the search engine for writers.

Why So Many People Write at Starbucks: http://ow.ly/Kl2NW @theryanlanz

3 Career Reinvention Tips From A Reporter Turned Romance Writer: http://ow.ly/KkYhI by Cindy Fazzi @forbes

5 Ingredients for Great Characters That You’re Not Using (Yet): http://ow.ly/KkY7J @screencrafting

Music For Writers: A Quartet Named @ethelcentral & Guitarist @KakiKing http://ow.ly/KyzaY @Porter_Anderson @EcstaticMusic @Q2music

Editing Clauses in Publishing Contracts: How to Protect Yourself: http://ow.ly/KlUWl @victoriastrauss

How Mirror Characters Can Illustrate Literary Themes: http://ow.ly/KlVGC @SaraL_Writer Continue reading

Creating Antagonists in Your Fiction

March 16, 2015March 16, 2015Uncategorized, Writing Tips

Guest Post by Jack Smith

Antagonists can be persons or larger forces—groups, institutions, the society as a whole, nature, or the cosmos. Plots dealing with larger forces tend to embody conflicts with individuals as representative of these larger forces. In conflicts with nature, individual antagonists can complicate these conflicts.

Let’s concentrate, then, on individuals…

Make sure your antagonist isn’t a one-dimensional or cardboard character, but is multi-dimensional—a worthy character to do battle with.

Avoid overshadowing your protagonist, but make your antagonist interesting enough to engage the reader; make him or her somewhat sympathetic, or at least empathetic, someone the reader can relate to. Namely:Continue reading