Quick Link: 5 Huge Mistakes Ruining the Romantic Relationships in Your Book

November 9, 2017 by Publetariat

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Hallelujah and Amen! I know this is about romantic relationships so it might not apply to everyone but I feel what Bella Pope is preaching. I see so many books with obviously unhealthy attitudes about sex and relationships that I had to share her post from The Write Life.

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5 Huge Mistakes Ruining the Romantic Relationships in Your Book

by Bella Pope

I’ll be the first to admit that there’s a serious problem with romantic relationships in literature nowadays.

And worse, this issue seems to be overlooked by the large majority of writers — until it’s too late, that is.

The problem: The unrealistic and unhealthy portrayal of romantic relationships.

There. I said it and now people can take notice because yes, there is a serious lack of realism when it comes to the romantic relationships in books..

Authors are writing relationships that are meant to be exciting and intense, but their execution of those couples can be flawed in sometimes very harmful, although unintentional ways.

There’s nothing wrong with writing romance. In fact, adding a romantic relationship to your book can do it some good. The dynamic of love can:

Read the full post on The Write Life!

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Link: How to Add Depth to Your Protagonist by Angela Ackerman

November 8, 2017 by Publetariat

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Even though this article by Angela Ackerman is from Romance University, it’s wise words are for every genre of writer. After all who doesn’t need more depth to their characters. Check it out!

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How to Add Depth to Your Protagonist by Angela Ackerman

by Angela Ackerman

I love it when a story idea grips me. Often, it starts with one small thing…a sound, or an image flash in my brain. Sometimes I’ll get both. The experience is so utterly sensory the real world is momentarily forgotten. Maybe I’ll see and hear the ominous flutter of a plastic grocery bag caught in a tree branch on a windy day. Immediately I’ll start to “know” things: there’s water nearby. A dead body lays in the reeds, a teenage girl. A boy will find her, one who has lost the ability to speak. Snippets trickle in, clues of the story ahead. Excitement builds. I’m sure it’s a similar process for many of you.

For me there’s always the temptation to rush down the rabbit hole and write the first scene: one where the mute boy discovers the girl’s body. I want to leap in, describe it all—how the light dapples the water, the warmth of the sun, the paleness of flesh devoid of life.

But the truth is, I’m not ready to write. I shouldn’t write.

Because even if I know exactly how the scene will go, how he will drag the body onto the bank, praying the girl is alive, wishing he had a voice to call for help, I don’t know anything yet about who he really is.

Read the full post on Romance University!

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Quick Link: How Pinterest Can Help Writers Write Better

November 7, 2017 by Publetariat

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

I love Pinterest. It is a great place for inspiration and help. Just be warned, it is very addictive and very easy to lose a lot of time there. At Live Write Thrive, guest poster Piers Golden shares how Pinterest can help you as a writer. Oh and I am paula1849 on Pinterest and I would love to hear from you!

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How Pinterest Can Help Writers Write Better

Today’s guest post is by Piers Golden.

As you are contemplating writing a book, the thought of using Pinterest as a tool may not occur to you until after the book is complete.

While Pinterest is a great marketing tool for authors, you may be surprised to find that there are many ways that Pinterest can improve your writing, depending on the type of book that you are writing.

Let’s take a look at these.

Plotting and Planning

All books require research. You may be confident in your subject matter, but if you are going to get the details just right, you will need to make sure that you have the right information when you are describing locations, actions, and secondary characters.

This may seem like a minor issue, but these are the types of details that can throw a reader out of the story. As you are beginning the research portion of your novel, you may find Pinterest useful.

Read the full post on Live Write Thrive!

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Quick Link: Make The Most Of A Scene Through The Senses – With A Simple List

November 6, 2017 by Publetariat

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

This is one of those ideas who simplicity is brilliant! At Writers Write Anthony Ehlers shares a simple list that you can use to get the most of out of using your senses to really bring the reader into the scene.

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Make The Most Of A Scene Through The Senses – With A Simple List

by Anthony Ehlers

But don’t forget – that deaf, dumb, and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball

Bringing in as many of the senses to a scene in a novel or story is a powerful way to lift your writing, to make it more vivid, authentic, alive.

Real people react to the senses at every moment of their lives: fictional people should too. Sometimes, as writers, we bring in the senses to a scene … then forget to thread them through the rest of the scene. And this could be a missed opportunity, isn’t it?

For example, in a romance novel, you could have two young lovers enjoying a picnic by the lake when they are caught in a spring storm. The rain takes them by surprise on the sunny afternoon. They run for the cover of an old abandoned gazebo on the edge of the park, where they make out passionately.

List the sensations

Read the full post on Writers Write!

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Quick Link: Herd Your CATS

November 3, 2017 by Publetariat

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Of course, we are not talking about literal cats, more literary CATS. Or as James Scott Bell at Kill Zone describes it “Character Alone Thinking Scenes”. While these types of scenes can be very powerful, they do have to be used at the right time. Read the article and tell me what you think!

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“Everything in the universe is either potato or not potato”

Herd Your CATS

by James Scott Bell

We all know that getting a reader inside a lead character’s head is one of the keys to compelling fiction. But it has to be done seamlessly so it doesn’t jerk us out of the narrative and put a crimp in the fictive dream.

Which means we have to learn to handle what I call “Character Alone Thinking Scenes” (CATS) in a deft manner.

The first issue is whether to begin the book with a CATS. As last Wednesday’s first-page critique demonstrated (in my view, at least) the answer should almost always be No.

Why? Because we have to have a little personal investment in someone before we can care deeply about their feelings.

Imagine going to a party and you’re introduced to a fellow with a drink in his hand. You say, “How are you?” and the guy says, “I’m really depressed, man, I wake up every day and the room looks dark and the sun never shines, even though it’s out there, and I don’t see it because of the dark dankness in my soul, and life has lost its meaning, its luster, whatever it was it once had for me when I was young and ready to take on the world. Ya know?”

AHHHH!!!!

Read the full post on Kill Zone

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Quick Link: When Does a Writer Rest? It’s Time to Talk About Self-Care

November 1, 2017 by Publetariat

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

You know how much I love self care articles and with today being the first day of NaNoWriMo, a time when people go crazy writing, that this article from The Write Life would be perfect!

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When Does a Writer Rest? It’s Time to Talk About Self-Care

by Emily Wenstrom

Let’s start with some cold reality: My 2017 Q2 sales report is in.

I sold a grand total of 25 books, between two titles.

While my publisher assures me this is normal for a small press author between releases, I was somewhat distraught over this report.

There are a lot of reasons behind this dip in sales. As my publisher pointed out, I was in a lull between releases (my last true launch was March 2016, over a year before). Additionally, my personal life was in upheaval.

I had just settled back into my home in D.C. and returned to a full-time office job after two years of freelancing and flexibility. Additionally, a loved one was in the midst of chemotherapy treatments, and for whatever reason, the hubs and I had chosen to do an unusual amount of travel during this period.

In short, it was a busy and overwhelming time in just about every way. I was exhausted. This limited my ability to write consistently, let alone focus on marketing.

Sometimes, something just has to give.

Read the full post on The Write Life

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Quick Link: 5 Writing Tips: Harlan Coben

October 31, 2017 by Publetariat

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

This is a short but good post at Publishers Weekly by bestselling author Harlan Coben. It amused me but still good words to write by.

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5 Writing Tips: Harlan Coben

Working off my Rule 3, I’m going to skip boring you with a long introductory paragraph and get straight to it:

1. You can always fix bad pages. You can’t fix no pages.

So write. Just write. Try to turn off that voice of doom that paralyzes you.

Read the full post on Publishers Weekly!

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Quick Link: 5 Tips for Creating Believable Fictional Languages

October 27, 2017 by Publetariat

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Today’s offering is a little selective – it’s for people who want to incorporate a fictional language into their story. Fictional languages have really grown with there now being professionals who do nothing but create fake languages. But that sounds expensive and is probably out of our budget. So here is Amber Massey posting over at Helping Writers Become Authors to help us save a few bucks!

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5 Tips for Creating Believable Fictional Languages

by Amber Massey

Gone are the days when you could speak gibberish in a movie or a novel—think Princess Leia’s scene negotiating with Jabba the Hutt in Return of the Jedi—and pass it off as obscure, exotic fictional languages.

Today, when your characters speak fictional languages, your audience expects these languages to sound real, with natural-sounding vocabulary and an authentic flow and syntax. Blame authors like J.R.R. Tolkien, who spent many decades fine-tuning Quenya, Sindarin, and the other languages in his epic fantasy trilogies.

But Tolkien wasn’t alone. From Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels to HBO’s Game of Thrones, using believable fictional languages helps readers believe in your mythology and immerse themselves in your world.

And unlike HBO, you don’t need to hire a team of linguists to start creating your own language. These five tips can help get you started.

Read the full post on Helping Writers Become Authors!

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Quick Link: How to Build a Personal Brand While Staying Authentic to Your Craft

October 26, 2017 by Publetariat

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

This is the hard part about being an author as opposed to a writer. You have to market yourself. That is hard, a lot of us (me included) have a hard time connecting socially on the web and think of marketing as a dirty word. At The Write Life, Andrea Guevara has some great information on how to help us so that we can reach others while still staying us.

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How to Build a Personal Brand While Staying Authentic to Your Craft

by Andrea Guevara

You’re a writer, a change-maker, someone who influences culture — not a boring old corporate brand. You roll your eyes when it comes time to talk about working on your personal brand.

I get it; It goes against your anarchist, artist nature.

A few years ago after nearly two decades as an entrepreneur, I came back to my love: Writing.

About a year into my time at the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, a classmate and I attended an all-day marketing for writers seminar. Somewhere around the second or third presenter, I was totally overwhelmed. I thought the hardest work I’d do as a writer would be the writing. I had no idea just how much the publishing industry had tightened its belt, and how much promotion was now in writer’s hands.

I wanted to create art, not be a one-woman marketing show.

Read the full post on The Write Life!

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Quick Link: How Do You Know When to Stop Expanding and Start Revising?

October 25, 2017 by Publetariat

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

I don’t know about you, but I could write and write and never get to editing. So this article from Mary Carroll Moore at her site, How To Plan, Write, And Develop A Book, is a really good post for people like us!

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How Do You Know When to Stop Expanding and Start Revising?

by Mary Carroll Moore

The relationship of writer to book-in-progress reminds me of a marriage. As opposed to a date.

Poems, articles, columns, and short stories are all creative commitments, sure. But even if they linger unfinished for a while, they are short relationships compared to 350 pages of manuscript.

With a book, you regularly re-evaluate your progress, your purpose, and your plans. You recommit again and again. Not unlike the work it takes to make a marriage work.

Many of my students weary of this. Is it ever done? they ask. When is enough, enough?

Some writers ask this when stuck or bored. Revising seems like more fun than continuing to draft chapters. But there is a real moment when the book has expanded as much as it needs to, and only in the more microscopic work of revision can the writer discover the next levels of truth in the story.

A writer from New York, working on his nonfiction book for several years, once sent me a very good question about this: “At what point does one realize what they are trying to write is the final ‘version’? My subject/point of view has changed several times. When do I stop?”

Read the full post on How To Plan, Write, And Develop A Book!

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Quick Link: Writing scene breaks and transitions that develop your story

October 24, 2017 by Publetariat

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Creating a sense of time is really important to help your reader effortlessly engage in your story and keep track of when they are. At Now Novel, they have a great post with tips on how to write these types of scenes.

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Writing scene breaks and transitions that develop your story

Scene breaks and transitions allow us to experience things happening in different places and times, and to different characters. Writing good scene breaks and transitions will keep your story moving, even as you switch between settings (places and times) and viewpoints. Read tips and illustrative examples:

1: Use scene transitions to shift between time periods

There are many ways to use scene transitions and breaks in your book.

One way to use scene transitions is to switch between present experiences and backstory.

Zadie Smith uses this type of scene transition effectively in her novel White Teeth (2000). In her first chapter, set in 1974 and 1945, the owner of a Halaal butchery saves Archie Jones from committing suicide in his car. The scene ends thus:

Read the full post on Now Novel!

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Quick Link: The 3 Biggest Pitch Mistakes This Editor Sees Every Day

October 23, 2017 by Publetariat

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

For those of you trying to get some extra writing jobs here is a great post by Nicole Dieker at The Write Life that will help you up your game!

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The 3 Biggest Pitch Mistakes This Editor Sees Every Day

by Nicole Dieker

The Write Life wants to help you get better at pitching! We’ve compiled our best tips into a simple, printable checklist for you to use time and time again. Best of all? It’s free. Click here to grab your freelance writer’s pitch checklist.

As an editor, I read a lot of pitches.

Some of them are really easy to say yes to — they’re the pitches that outline a strong, clear narrative with a takeaway for the reader. Other pitches are easy to say no to — they’re either poorly written, irrelevant to the publication or (as is often the case), both.

It’s the ones in between that are hard.

Every day I see writers pitch ideas or topics that could be great stories if they’d done a little more work or written a slightly better pitch. Sometimes I ask them to rework their pitch.

Sometimes I take a chance and hope there’s a good story in there. But often, I say no. After all, I have plenty of better pitches in my inbox.

If you’re a writer who’s sending out pitches but not getting a lot of assignments, maybe you’re writing those in-between types of pitches — the kind that could be really good with a little improvement.

Here are three of the most common pitch mistakes I see every day, along with how to fix them.

Read the full post on The Write Life!

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Quick Link: Fast-Draft Writing for NaNoWriMo and Every Other Month

October 20, 2017 by Publetariat

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Less that two weeks until NaNoWriMo! So here is another prepping article from the folks at Writers Helping Writers!

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Fast-Draft Writing for NaNoWriMo and Every Other Month

by Writing Coach

I am an advocate of intentional writing, which almost always means slow writing, but sometimes it makes sense to write a fast draft of a book – if, for example, you are participating in NaNoWriMo, have a chunk of time with few distractions, or have a fast-approaching deadline you are motivated to meet.

Writing fast still requires intentionality. You still need a plan – a clear idea of the point you wish your story to make and a grasp of the best narrative structure to get you there. That is to say, you need to know what you want your reader to walk away feeling after they read your novel and what they will walk away believing about the world or human nature. You also need to know where the story starts and ends and what the reader will be tracking along the way.

Let’s assume that you know all those fundamental elements and you’re ready to write. How do you write fast?

Read the full post on Writers Helping Writers!

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Quick Link: 5 Tips for Organizing Subplots

October 19, 2017 by Publetariat

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Plots are of course the main point about your book. But the thing about plots is that there is usually a lot of other stuff going on at the same time, otherwise, your book would be as simple as a young child’s. Subplots help with creating the other stuff and K.M. Weiland has a great post on her site Helping Writers Become Authors to help out.

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5 Tips for Organizing Subplots

by K.M. Weiland

Imagine you walk into a candy shop, but what you discover inside, instead of candy, is display after display of subplots. Enough to make any writer’s mouth water, right? Writers love the idea of subplots. They’re rich, juicy, complex, and full of opportunities for taking your story to the next level. But organizing subplots, or even just figuring out what your subplots are? That can sometimes be trickier.

I’m often asked about subplots, but it’s one of those subjects (like POV) that is bigger than just a simple answer. This is because subplots, when done right, are all but camouflaged within the larger story. Good subplots integrate with the main plot to the point they’re inextricable from the story’s bigger picture.

In short: you can’t master the art of organizing subplots without mastering the art of plotting itself.

Read the full post on Helping Writers Become Authors

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5 Huge Mistakes Ruining the Romantic Relationships in Your Book

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How to Add Depth to Your Protagonist by Angela Ackerman

But the truth is, I’m not ready to write. I shouldn’t write.

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How Pinterest Can Help Writers Write Better

Plotting and Planning

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Make The Most Of A Scene Through The Senses – With A Simple List

List the sensations

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The Do’s and Don’ts of Naming Characters

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When Does a Writer Rest? It’s Time to Talk About Self-Care

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5 Writing Tips: Harlan Coben

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5 Tips for Creating Believable Fictional Languages

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How to Build a Personal Brand While Staying Authentic to Your Craft

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How Do You Know When to Stop Expanding and Start Revising?

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Writing scene breaks and transitions that develop your story

1: Use scene transitions to shift between time periods

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The 3 Biggest Pitch Mistakes This Editor Sees Every Day

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Fast-Draft Writing for NaNoWriMo and Every Other Month

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5 Tips for Organizing Subplots

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