Wordherders: What Works, What Doesn’t Work

For our August 2020 discussion, the Wordherders brought examples from their reading – and their writing – to share with others as examples of what works for them in writing and what doesn’t. Rosann Ferris: Killers of the Flower Moon, The Osage Murders, and the Birth of the FBI by David Gran Jess Goodrich has been reading political essays. What didn’t work for her is when authors of essays meant to persuade the… Read More

Gestures, Expressions, and Movement Beats by Category

From Allen Johnson: I have been reading best sellers (Nora Roberts, Sandra Brown, Dean Koontz) and, all the while, keeping an eye on dialogue and motion/gesture beats. I’ve organized them into categories (e.g., anger, anguish, nervousness, joy, walking, sitting, etc.). My purpose has not been to plagiarize but to give myself some ideas for creating my own beats. I thought the list (now 16 pages) might be helpful for other writers in… Read More

Exposition

“Show, don’t tell.” Narration is telling; exposition is showing. In trying to learn more about how to use exposition well in writing, I’ve found two perspectives particularly helpful. First, Jennifer Paros, in an essay, “The Ol’ ‘Show Don’t Tell’ Thing” counsels that authors should allow their reader to “enter a world, instead of just hearing about it.” Granted, this is just a different way to say “show, don’t tell” but in a… Read More

Justina Ireland, On Openings – A Twitter Thread

Justina Ireland; @justinaireland, March 13, 2018 Writers, gather round. Let’s talk about openings. Most especially: establishing scenes and the promise of the story. The promise of the story is the aboutness of your book. Not necessarily the theme, it’s the point of the story. At some point the conventional wisdom became that writers should start their stories as close to the inciting incident as possible. And while true, that doesn’t mean you… Read More

Andrea Phillips, Leave Nothing to Chance – A Twitter Thread

Andrea Phillips; @andrhia; Oct 5, 2017 Heyyyy I’m sick, overwhelmed, and everything is terrible, so here’s a thread on craft and how writing for multimedia made me better at prose. I’ve written scripts for video and audio, several kinds of games text and dialogue, social media of every kind, news both real and fictional. Friends, if there is such a thing as a generalist writer, it is me. I have written ALL… Read More

Top 5 Developmental Issues by Naomi Hughes

This thread was posted by Naomi Hughes (@NaomiHughesYA) on twitter.  You should follow her! This thread is also available from the Thread Reader App (@threadreaderapp) on twitter. I haven’t done a writing-advice thread in a while because I was so busy working on my WIP, but now that I’m done, how about a chat on the top 5 developmental issues I see as an editor? One of the most common issues I see in manuscripts I edit is… Read More

Scene Craft by Naomi Hughes

This thread was posted by Naomi Hughes (@NaomiHughesYA) on twitter.  You should follow her! This thread is also available from the Thread Reader App (@threadreaderapp) on twitter. Today, let’s chat about the most common problems I see at the next stage of editing: scene craft! Scene craft is something that you can definitely build into your manuscript from draft 1. It’s all about keeping the reader riveted at the scene-by-scene level, even if nothing… Read More

Legendary, by Donald Maass

From: http://writerunboxed.com/2018/01/03/legendary/#more-51527 Recently, a young agent on my staff requested a really good manuscript.  She wanted to represent it.  Naturally, so did a number of other sharp-eyed agents and thus my young colleague found herself in a so-called beauty contest, a familiar competitive event in our profession. To back up my young colleague’s bid, I arranged a phone call with the equally young, appallingly talented young writer of the manuscript in question.  I told… Read More

25 Things A Great Character Needs, by Chuck Wendig

From: http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2014/01/13/25-things-a-great-character-needs See the original post for the more colorful, uncensored version. 1. A Personality This seems rather obvious, sure — in a way it’s like saying, “What makes a really good tree is that it has an essential treeness” — but just the same, it bears mentioning. Because some characters read like cardboard. They’re like white crayon on white paper. Sure, the characters run around and they do **** and say **** but… Read More

Novel characters: 15 top character creation tips

From: https://www.nownovel.com/blog/novel-characters-15-tips Great novel characters share common features: Distinct, authentic voices, character development, clear goals and motivations, strengths and flaws. Here are 15 of our top character creation tips gathered from some of the best writing blogs and websites: 1: Give your novel characters clear motivations that drive your story Writing characters who spring to life off the page is partly about giving characters clear motivations. Over at Terrible Minds, Chuck Wendig sums this up eloquently:… Read More