Limiting the Number of Characters

Writing Tips

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig 

This is the second post in a short series about making our lives easier as writers. One thing that I’ve tried to be more conscious of as the years have gone by is limiting the number of characters I introduce in a story or series.

With a cozy mystery series, for example, the field of characters is already going to be pretty crowded. You have a sleuth and a sidekick and around five suspects. And then you have recurring characters: friends and family of the sleuth and  some sort of police presence.

The more characters we add, the harder it is for readers to keep up.  And we run the risk of not having the space to make the characters more than one-dimensional.Continue reading

Twitterific Writing Links

Twitterific, Uncategorized

Bluebird with beak open and 'Twitterific Writing Links' by ElizabethSCraig superimposed on the image

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 50,000 free articles on writing related topics. It’s the search engine for writers.

Have you visited the WKB lately?  Check out the new redesign where you can browse by category, and sign up for free writing articles, on topics you choose, delivered to your email inbox!  Sign up for the Hiveword newsletter here.

Continue reading

KDP Reports

Business of Writing

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

On Monday, I’ll be picking up on my blog series ‘making life easier as a writer.’  But today I wanted to point out something new (still in beta) on the KDP dashboard in case you’ve missed it (and I know lots of you probably noticed this earlier than I did!)

KDP is rolling out their new reports section and my first impression is that it looks really helpful.

I’m one of those authors who absolutely hates doing metrics on ads or tracking sales. I know it’s something important but delving down into spreadsheets and the business aspect has always been something of a drag.

I love that Amazon is making this easier.  For one thing, I like to keep track of which series sells better. For another, I like to see which individual books seem to sell strongest in a series…and try to figure out what the magic formula was so that I can duplicate it again.Continue reading

Twitterific Writing Links

Twitterific, Uncategorized

Bluebird with beak open and 'Twitterific Writing Links' by ElizabethSCraig superimposed on the image

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 50,000 free articles on writing related topics. It’s the search engine for writers.

Have you visited the WKB lately?  Check out the new redesign where you can browse by category, and sign up for free writing articles, on topics you choose, delivered to your email inbox!  Sign up for the Hiveword newsletter here.

Continue reading

Beginning Close to the Action

Writing Tips

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I’m running a short blog series on making your life easier as a writer. I’m planning on sharing a few tips that I’ve learned over the years (often through making mistakes).

Starting it out today is a quick tip for writers: get the central action of the story started as soon as possible.

Some writers advocate starting in medias res, or in the middle of the action.  This can work too, if you can handle a bit of backstory well later (how did our heroes get in this situation? Who are these people and why should we care about them? What’s going on?)

But starting in the middle of things comes with its own set of problems, too.  The stakes aren’t as high when readers aren’t yet invested in the characters.Continue reading

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