by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
Twitterific links are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search alengine(developed by writer and software engineer Mike Fleming) which has over 23,000 free articles on writing related topics. It’s the search engine for writers.
3 Deadly Traps for a Writer: http://ow.ly/vqpld @jonathangunson @RogerDColby
Writers: Fire Your Guru: http://ow.ly/vqkxv @rchazzchute
How to Stop Procrastinating and Just Write: http://ow.ly/vqknz @screencraftingContinue reading
Guest Post by Jack Smith
Robert Garner McBrearty, author of the Sherwood Anderson Foundation Fiction Prize for his collection Episode, recently shared a technique he’s been using to draft a novel.
Write the whole thing through, regardless of length, and then expand from within.
This is a great process idea. Of course, prior to drafting, you do need a sense for your character and where you want to take this character. But, assuming you have that, just shoot through the draft. Don’t worry about all the scenes you might flesh out your novel with, all the secondary characters you might come up with, subplots, etc. Just write through what appears to be the essential conflicts—the ones that tell your basic story. Continue reading
by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
When I spoke to students recently, they asked a lot of questions and some very good ones. Naturally, though, one of the questions, which won’t surprise any writer who talks about his writing, was ‘where do you get your ideas?’ This question is practically mandatory any time you mention writing to anyone…whether you’re speaking at a conference or telling a stranger at the grocery store what you do.
But as I thought about it, the question has another angle too, one that was asked later on by another student. How do you develop a story–a nearly three hundred page, finished book–out of a tiny spark of an idea?
Because I write genre/commercial fiction, the following will be heavily skewed toward anyone writing for a particular genre’s readers. Continue reading
by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
Twitterific links are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search alengine(developed by writer and software engineer Mike Fleming) which has over 23,000 free articles on writing related topics. It’s the search engine for writers.
Why You Should Walk Away From Your Writing: http://ow.ly/vaqb0 @KMWeiland
How boxed sets can help self-published authors sell more books: http://ow.ly/vaqgS @DianeCapri
Report from the Trenches: The Agent Panel: http://ow.ly/vaqyx @querytracker
Crafting Interesting Characters: http://ow.ly/vaqht @woodwardkaren Continue reading
by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
I recently read an interesting novel—I won’t say which one, since I’d be spoiling the ending. The most important character in the book was killed in an ending I didn’t see coming. The death was a bit of a plot twist in itself because of what it said about a separate character in the story.
After finishing, I was curious to see what other readers had thought about the book. I braved Goodreads—a site I hate as a writer, but sometimes enjoy as a reader—and found several discussions about the novel. And…to my surprise, most readers slammed the ending.Continue reading
