Category: Writing Tips

Genre-Blending—Adding Elements of Another Genre to Our Story

Writing Tips

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraigShear Trouble 2

Last year, I received a contract extension for my Southern Quilting mysteries—Penguin wanted two more books. So I knew that the series would last through 2015 and then would be up for consideration again.  I started writing the book that’s coming out this August, Shear Trouble.

I was about to work on subplots for the story when I got an email from a reader in South America. She’s what many writers call a “True Fan.” True Fans have been defined by former Wired editor Kevin Kelly as:

“A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can’t wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans.”Continue reading

Twitterific Writing Links

Twitterific, Writing Tips

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraigBlog

Twitterific links are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search engine(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.

Have a great week!

Using Amazon KDP’s New Cover Creator http://t.co/wqrhRrB0xN @nickdaws

7 Essential Questions of Plot— Do You Ask Them?  http://t.co/MauI0e3OXf @JennyHansenCA

Getting Physical: Ways to Make Your Characters Come Alive:  http://t.co/6qkI5L9NoX @RMFWriters

7 Lessons Learned from Half a Year of Writing Every Day:  http://t.co/grXieJRZwJ @jamietr

Myst. Lov. Kitchen: Super Bowl Recipe for a Crowd! http://t.co/pBTaQ30I8M @CleoCoyle

Writer of a Certain Age:  http://t.co/ENbgBQUySV @fay_weldon @NYTimes       Continue reading

My Process for Approaching Large Revisions

Writing Tips

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

sw_Editing_N10_20130809_230442 (1)I received an email last week from a writer who is feeling a little overwhelmed by the revision process and asked if I’d written any posts that helped to sort of sort through revision in an organized way.

And my first reaction was, besides completely understanding why anyone would feel overwhelmed, was: “Oh sure, I’ve got gobs of blog posts like that.”  But…no.  Although I talk a lot about my need for revision and stuff I’ve had to fix in the past, and the fact that I don’t edit while I draft–I had no posts at all about how I organize and approach revision.  So I’ll correct that now.  And, looking at my process below, I’m thinking that one reason I might not have outlined this before is because it so closely resembles my process for writing a book that maybe I thought I’d repeat myself.Continue reading

Does Mind Mapping Hurt?

Tools for Writers, Writing Tips

by Delia Brendan, @deliabrendan

delia brendan undercoverYears ago, I went to a plotting workshop. The workshop leader described a process involving white poster board and multi-colored sticky notes. She described how each sticky note color corresponded to various plot elements. At the end of the exercise, she showed the group a completed plot map and explained how this process could help you from getting bogged down during drafting.

As a visual person, I loved the concept of working from a map. So, I dutifully went out and bought white poster board and enough sticky notes to outfit a corporation. As an organizationally-challenged over thinker, I was soon mired down in details. Was Dr. Venom’s mother from Siberia a blue sticky note because she was related to a bad guy or a green sticky note because she befriends the heroine? No surprise, I never wound up with a plot map and I’m still pulling sticky notes out of sock drawers and couch cushions. Continue reading

Reasons and Methods of Killing Characters—And One Reason Not To

Mystery Writing Tips, Writing Tips

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

There’s an interesting phenomenon when you comb through your RSS reader—even if you have a large number of blogs that you’re following.  Sometimes it’s as if everyone got an idea for a particular blog post at the same time.  This is natural when you’re talking about posts on a topical issue (publishing news) but a little eerie when it happens spontaneously, with nothing prompting it.Dagger

So I recently came across and shared or scheduled for sharing, four different posts in a week’s time, that either linked to material on the same topic, or posted on that topic.  So we’ve got “400+ Ways to Kill a Character” from Clever Girl Helps,  “How to Successfully Kill a Character—the Checklist” from K.M. Weiland,  “How to Kill Your Main Character” from Rhiannon Paille, and “Murder 101—7 Reasons to Kill Your Character” from Robert Smedley.Continue reading

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