Quick Links: What Is Your Character’s Cornerstone?

January 4, 2017 by Publetariat

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

First, I totally love Westworld, so I am biased about this post from Rachel Scheller. However, she has a great point about dealing with backstory issues. We are often told to watch out for too much backstory, but as Rachel points out, you want to have enough for your character to have a cornerstone, to make sense of their actions. Check it out at Writer’s Digest.

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What Is Your Character’s Cornerstone?

By: Rachel Scheller

For the unitiated, here’s a brief, spoiler-free premise: Westworld is a Wild West-themed park populated by robots—called “hosts”—who are so lifelike they can’t be distinguished from actual human beings. Though they’re controlled by intricate programming and the humans who run the park, the hosts look, speak, move, and bleed just like we do. Ultra-rich tourists are given free reign to interact with, kill, and “enjoy” the hosts as they please, without consequence. The hosts are assigned to specific roles (the farmer’s daughter, the handsome rogue with a dark past, the madam at a saloon) and given specific storylines to follow, which they complete on endless loops.

Westworld explores many themes, but one of the most compelling topics it tackles centers on how both humans and hosts are influenced by their pasts. How can robots have pasts? you might ask. These backstories are bestowed by the programmers and writers who run Westworld and control its hosts, and they serve a function beyond simple verisimilitude. As Elsie, one of the technicians on Westworld, puts it: “Backstories do more than amuse guests; they anchor the host. It’s their cornerstone.”

Read the full post on Writer’s Digest

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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: Cause and Effect: Telling Your Story in the Right Order

December 26, 2016 by Publetariat

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

So we have all heard the writing tip “show don’t tell” but there is another really good one from Karen Krumpak at Writer’s Digest. Write the cause then the effect. It makes for much tighter writing. Check it out and see for yourself.

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Cause and Effect: Telling Your Story in the Right Order

By: Karen Krumpak | November 22, 2016

We all understand that the game must start somehow. Normally that happens when one player hits that cue ball to break the triangle of racked balls. And from then on, every time a ball hits another, that contact results in an effect.

It’s the same with a story, as you’ll see in this excerpt from Troubleshooting Your Novel by Steven Jame

Read the full post on Writer’s Digest

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Quick Link: 10 eye-opening tips to add impact to your storytelling

December 22, 2016 by Publetariat

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

Sometimes it is the little things that make a good story great. That is what Roz Morris, owner of Nail Your Novel, is talking about. She has some great tips on how to nudge your story a little bit and make it greater. What tips do you have?

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10 eye-opening tips to add impact to your storytelling

by Roz Morris

When I work with a writer on their first serious novel manuscript, there are certain aspects they usually get right on instinct alone. There’s the content – a believable story world, characters with solid backgrounds and stuff to do. They usually write fluently too. But there are other, more hidden levels of craft that they usually haven’t noticed in good books, but will make an immense difference to the quality of their work. So here are a few.

1 Keeping the reader’s curiosity

When we’re kids we’re taught we must finish any book we start. Like eating every morsel on the plate, even the detested Brussels sprouts. But a reader will not persevere with a book out of politeness. So writers have to be relentless showmen (within the expectations of their particular genre, of course). Curiosity is the name of the game. Compelling writers will prime the reader to be curious about everything they show – a character, story development, back story or historical context. How do you learn this? Read with awareness. Analyse what keeps you gripped in books you enjoy. (Often when I point this out, the reply is: ‘I get so swept up that I don’t give it a thought’. QED. I don’t want to spoil your enjoyment, but learn to read with primed antennae.)

Read the full post on Nail Your Novel

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Quick Link: Writing in Third Person Omniscient vs Third Person Limited

December 21, 2016 by Publetariat

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

Over at Reedsy they have a great post describing the differences between third person omniscient voice and third person limited. It is really well done so if this is something you had questions about, go check it out. I know I learned a lot.

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Writing in Third Person Omniscient vs Third Person Limited

November 17, 2016

You may have a clear vision for what or who your book is about — but do you know how to tell your story? One of the first major decisions you’ll face as an author is determining the style of narration in your book. Is your story best served by writing in first person, third person, or — if you’re feeling adventurous — second person?

In this post, we’ll be looking at the options available to authors writing in the third person: omniscient and limited. In third person omniscient narration, the narrator has a god’s eye view of the story and is privy to all characters’ thoughts, as well as knowledge of the past and future. Then there’s third person limited, where the narrator’s scope of knowledge is intimately tied to a particular character — very often the protagonist.

For those of you who understand images better than words, we have included a fun graphic mystery that illustrates the power of both viewpoints. If you’re ready to start, just scroll on down!

Read the full post on Reedsy

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Quick Link: 4 Simple Tips To Catch More Errors When Proofreading

December 18, 2016 by Publetariat

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

I am always so jealous of people who can edit their own work, quickly. That is why this article written by Robert Wood from Stand Out Books caught my attention. Even if you are one of those clever people who can edit on the fly, you still might find something worth reading.

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4 Simple Tips To Catch More Errors When Proofreading

August 10, 2016 by Robert Wood

Proofreading will make your story better. There are few guarantees anyone can give about art – even fewer that apply to every individual – but that’s one of them. Proofreading, in fact, is the single most effective way to make your story better; a magic bullet that can transform a piece of writing from unpublishable to unbelievable.

It’s a shame, then, that it’s something from which our brains seem inherently repulsed. If you’re an author, you’ve probably had the experience of sitting down to proofread a piece of work and ending up doing anything else. Writer’s block is a piece of cake next to proofer’s block. What’s more, our brains hate proofreading so much that they’ll even convince us we can’t do it, or that it doesn’t need doing, or that it doesn’t need doing yet – anything to avoid carrying out this onerous, completely necessary task.

As an editor who has proofread many different works, I’ve got some experience in convincing my brain to stop complaining and get to work. Some of that is training, some is experience, and some is minor tips and tricks that make the whole endeavor easier to pull off. In this article, I’ll be sharing four of those basic tips and explaining how they can make your proofreading easier, more effective, and more likely to happen in the first place. Before that, though, I need to clear something up.

Read the full post on Stand Out Books

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Quick Link: 3 Ways to Improve Your Storytelling

December 12, 2016 by Publetariat

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

The always impressive Janice Harding has a great article on what to do to improve your storytelling. These tips work well with a bare bones outline approach we talked about in a previous post. Head on over to Fiction University to learn more!

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3 Ways to Improve Your Storytelling

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

This week’s Refresher Friday takes another look at three ways to improve your storytelling. Enjoy!

My high school creative writing teacher had the best definition of story that I’ve ever seen.

A story is interesting people, solving interesting problems, in interesting ways.

The genius is in its simplicity. Interesting is subjective and open to so many possibilities, which allows for everyone to approach it in their own creative way. But the core idea is solid. People solving problems. At the heart of every story is a problem to be solved (the conflict).

To improve our storytelling skills, all we have to do it focus on the three things that make a story a story.

1. Interesting People (The Characters)

Even in formula-heavy action stories, character stands out. Everyone knows James Bond, or Harry Potter, or that gal Dorothy Gale from Kansas. A great story has characters who offer something interesting to readers.

Read the full post on Fiction University

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Quick Link: How To Vividly Describe a Setting That You’ve Never Visited by Angela Ackerman

December 7, 2016 by Publetariat

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

One way to get around having to deal with settings is by having a completely fictional world. But even then, most writers are inspired by real places around them and not all genres support this. At Romance University, Angela Ackerman shares great tips on how to find useful information to fill in scene details.

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How To Vividly Describe a Setting That You’ve Never Visited by Angela Ackerman

by Angela Ackerman

Woohoo! Angela Ackerman is back in the house with another fabulous post! Do not miss this one!

One of the big decisions writers are faced with is whether to choose a real location for the backdrop of their overall story, or create one of their own imagining. Crafting a world from scratch is a lot of work (requiring a deep understanding of the society, infrastructure, rules, governmental influence, as well as a million other details). But it also avoids a big problem associated with real-world locations: reader bias. This is when the reader’s own emotional ties to a place influence their reading experience.

Imagine your character is living in a neighborhood that a reader grew up in. Even if you carefully researched the setting, perhaps visited it yourself, people and places still change over time. Stores close, schools are torn down. Streets are renamed. Readers will expect the story world to match what they remember, and this isn’t always the case, causing a ripple in their reading experience.

Bias aside, there are many great reasons to place your story in the real world. Readers can slip into the action easier when they understand it takes place in Chicago or Amsterdam because they recognize these areas and can fill in blanks as far as how “big picture” society works.

Read the full post on Romance University

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Quick Link: How I Use Skeleton Outlines to Write Faster

December 6, 2016 by Publetariat

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

I confess to being partial to today’s post because using skeleton outlines is how I like to write. To me it is almost magic how the story unfolds and almost creates itself. So if you are interested check out Jennifer Mattern‘s post on All Indie Writers.

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How I Use Skeleton Outlines to Write Faster

by Jennifer Mattern | Nov 6, 2016

A fellow writer mentioned that client projects sometimes took longer than they’d hoped, and they wanted to learn to write faster. While there are plenty of ways you can increase your writing speed, one tip I gave them was to try using what I call “skeleton outlines.”

I worked through the beginning stages of one while they watched just to show how quick the process could be. And today I’d like to share the resulting example I created so you too can give this technique a try.

This post kicks off a new series where I’ll highlight some of my favorite writing resources and strategies, showing you exactly how I use them, and occasionally sharing my personal tools that I’ve created to use in the day-to-day running of my business.

Let’s take a look at what skeleton outlines are and how they can help you get through writing projects big and small.

What Are Skeleton Outlines?

A skeleton outline is a high-level breakdown of your content. It lets you know what’s coming — what you have to write — without you actually thinking about the meat of that content.

Read the full post on All Indie Writers

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Quick Link: How Novelists Can Work Plot Twists into Their Stories

December 5, 2016 by Publetariat

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

Today’s post is all about the plot twist! At Live Write Thrive, C.S. Lakin talks about working good twists into your script.

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How Novelists Can Work Plot Twists into Their Stories

by C. S. Lakin

Plot twists are important and powerful elements in a novel. We took a quick look at twists last week, and I explained that you can have these twists in various places in your story, and they can vary in strength.

One novel may have lots of small twists that are basically complications and obstacles the protagonist encounters. But often you’ll have one or two huge twists that wrench the story, and those are terrific when done well.

So what do you need to keep in mind when creating a plot twist?

Twists are all about redirection. Going against expectations.

Think about what readers are expecting and hoping for at a given moment in the story. Then keep twisting the story into new directions that stun and delight them.

If your POV character is seeing indications that her boyfriend is going to propose to her—he’s invited her to a special dinner, says he has something important to tell her, etc., she’s going to get her hopes up. The more you, the author, can imply that’s the boyfriend’s intention, the more impacting the twist will be when he shows up at the restaurant and tells her, sadly, that he has to call it quits. That his long-lost love he thought dead was really alive and well in Chicago, and he just happened to bump into her at the dry cleaners. Or something like that.

Read the full post on Live Write Thrive

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Quick Link: Where to Begin Your Book: How to Choose the Best Opening

December 4, 2016 by Publetariat

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

Having a strong opening to your story is key in getting people to go beyond the free preview. Award wining author Mary Carroll Moore shares her tips on how to get it right.

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Where to Begin Your Book: How to Choose the Best Opening

by Mary Carroll Moore

Vintage picture frame Lots of writers struggle with the opening to their books, no matter what genre. I’m working with one client in my retainer coaching program who is writing a very large story–it spans thirty years or more. It’s a memoir, and a lot has happened to her in her long life, so choosing the starting moment is very challenging for her.

We begin by asking what this book is about. “My life,” she answers, and that’s true. But I ask again, “What’s it really about?”

I’m asking her: What’s the focus? What’s the subject of your story, the part you’re going to include in this particular book? Not your entire life. What will you select and why?

Everything you select for your book, whatever genre, sits within a frame. Imagine a photo frame that holds the photograph of your story. Just like any photo, it shows selected segment, a slice of a life. When you find yourself at a loss to imagine this frame–as my client said, “I can’t not put that in, or that either–that has to go in”–you don’t yet have a frame.

Read the full post on Mary Carroll Moore

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Quick Link: Why It’s Crucial to “Write Ugly”

November 22, 2016 by Publetariat

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

Writing “ugly” means giving up the all the rules that we have learned, to just write. That is part of the charm of NaNoWriMo for me, as I am so focused on the numbers even though I sometimes still wince at my writing. Writer Unboxed‘s Lisa Cron talks about how trying to write pretty can actually be holding you back from authentically good writing. Check it out.

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Why It’s Crucial to “Write Ugly”

July 14, 2016 By Lisa Cron

Holding a filthy heart. Here’s a scary thought. When it comes to writing, you may have done everything you’ve been taught to do with utter perfection, and precisely because of that, it turns out you’ve written something that is flat, boring and uninvolving. This all too common phenomenon is something I’m going to be deconstructing, myth by myth, for the next several months in my columns here. I’m beginning this month with the overarching granddaddy of them all – the myth that derails otherwise riveting stories before they’re even created.

It’s this: The myth that beautiful writing is what makes you a real writer, and (an even more damaging belief) that the beautiful writing comes first, before everything else. Beautiful writing is often equated with talent, and without talent, why write at all?

It is heartbreaking how many writers suffer from the deep rooted, often crippling fear of not “writing beautifully” from the very first iteration of the very first sentence on the very first page of the novel. We’ve been trained to be so fearful of penning anything that feels like “ugly writing” that we often end up creating something far worse.

To be very clear, by “writing ugly” I don’t mean writing about hard things, painful things, or any kind of “ugliness” – which is utterly crucial to good stories. Otherwise, you’re basically Hallmark, which is to say, irrelevant, cutesy and dull. Story is about the exact opposite. In fact, story is often about how to dig out from under the sugar coated, stifling straightjacket of the status-quo, which almost always means diving into what polite society has deemed to be ugly, unseemly, and uncomfortable.

Read the full post on Writer Unboxed

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Quick Links: 5 most common obstacles to writing your book

November 21, 2016 by Publetariat

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

Writing a book is hard. I can hear the snorts and feel the eye rolls from here. Yes it is hard. A majority of people want to write a story but very few people actually do. I can’t say anything as I join NaNoWriMo every year for the past year, but alas still no complete book. Is it any wonder that I love the people who actually manage to write great stories? Guest poster Kate Hanley at Build Book Buzz talks about the five most common reasons why people like me don’t write a book and how we can overcome them. How about you? What would you tell writer wannabes?

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Guest post: 5 most common obstacles to writing your book

Written on July 13, 2016

Our guest blogger on common obstacles to writing your book is my friend-in-real-life Kate Hanley, a New York Times-bestselling ghostwriter who helps authors get their message out and make a difference in the world. Her self-paced online class, “Write Your Book Like a Boss,” covers the nitty-gritty details of how to get a book written and published, as well as the squishier subjects, such as how to deal with your inner critic. (If you take the course, please select my name in the drop down menu — I will receive a small commission for the referral.) Kate is also the author of books under her own name. I received A Year of Daily Calm for Mother’s Day (my request!) and love it. Learn more about Kate on her website.

Guest post: 5 most common obstacles to writing your book

By Kate Hanley

There’s a reason why 80 percent of Americans (that’s 200 million people) say they want to write a book, yet only .04 percent of them actually do it in any given year: Writing a book is no small undertaking.

Doable? Absolutely. Easy? Not so much.

Especially if you’re falling prey to one or some of the most common obstacles to actually getting a book out into the world.

Are you subjecting yourself to any of these common roadblock thoughts? I hope seeing them with more clarity—and learning their workarounds—will help you get going!

Roadblock thought #1: “I don’t have the time.”

Of course getting all those words and thoughts down seems like it will take up mountains of time—and who has those lying around?

Detour: Rather than trying to “find” the time, presume it’s already there, and then go about claiming it.

Read the full post on Digital Book World

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Quick Links: Internal Dialogue: The Greatest Tool for Gaining Reader Confidence

November 17, 2016 by Publetariat

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

Internal dialogue – the inner thoughts and musings of your entities – is a great way to build trust with your reader and have them connect with your characters. At the Jane Friedman blog, author Elizabeth Sims helps us to write great internal dialogue. It is a great post, one I am going to bookmark.

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Internal Dialogue: The Greatest Tool for Gaining Reader Confidence

Posted on July 13, 2016 by Elizabeth Sims

Of course, this IS some peoples inner dialogue.

The following post by author Elizabeth Sims (@ESimsAuthor) is an excerpt from the newly released Crafting Dynamic Dialogue from Writer’s Digest Books.

Not long ago, one of my elderly neighbors lost several thousand dollars to a con artist. A stranger phoned with a convincing sob story that ended in a plea for money. My neighbor actually filled a paper lunch sack with twenty-dollar bills, drove to a nearby grocery store, stashed the bag behind a vegetable bin as directed, and left. Even when a friend explained that it was a trick, my neighbor was serene, believing he had done a service for someone in need.

The best con artists don’t begin by asking for your confidence—they give you theirs first. Here’s my story. I want you, you especially, to hear this. The request for help comes later. There’s the short con—one quick deception and out—and the long con, which takes time and patience to execute. But before either compassion or greed can be exploited, the mark must feel something for the con artist.

When you think about it, what is fiction but one beautiful long con? The reader—the mark—opens a book craving a good story, thirsting to be part of something special. We, as writers, do everything possible to gain the trust of our readers so we can entertain, shock, delight, and amuse them all the way to the end.

And the greatest tool for gaining reader confidence is internal dialogue. Because when a character reveals his thoughts, he’s confiding in the audience. I’m counting on you to understand me—and possibly even help me understand myself. Suddenly readers are in the thick of it; they feel involved and invested. They have some skin in the game.

Read the full post on Jane Friedman

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Quick Links: Veronica Scott presents: Where Does Your Story Actually Begin?

November 16, 2016 by Publetariat

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

It’s all about the backstory. Do you have too much? This hits home for me because right now my NaNoWriMo effort is all backstory. To be fair I am world & character building and if this story every makes it to publishing I plan on massive rewrites that won’t include all the extra information. Veronica Scott is completely right in her article on Romance University, it is important to know when your story really starts.

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Veronica Scott presents: Where Does Your Story Actually Begin?

July 13, 2016 by Veronica Scott

A story starts on page one, right? This post by author Veronica Scott will make you think about where your story really starts…

Welcome back, Veronica!

Where does your story actually begin? “Once upon a time” is a nice intro but maybe even fairy tales include too much backstory.

I’ve been judging various contests for unpublished authors recently and while of course I won’t mention any specifics, the main problem I see is that the author begins with one, two, sometimes even three chapters of material which they feel is necessary to the book. Unfortunately, all too often these chapters are solid info dump backstory or history. If I weren’t judging a contest entry for them, I’d be closing the manuscript and moving on. I’d never even get to the actual story! I see this same comment often in my social media feed from agents and editors, regarding submissions they receive.

(All examples are made up for this post!)

The author runs several risks here. First, while they certainly need to understand the history and events shaping their own world building, the reader is going to become bored fast with the events of the 200 Year War, told year by year, with no immediate connection to a hero or heroine they care about. This technique is even more likely to turn people off early if the author throws in a lot of terms and made-up language details. I’ve had a number of published authors tell me they do write this sort of material, often in early drafts of the novel, because it helps them think through their world building details, but they then delete the material from the final drafts. (I tend to keep scribbly notes on various purple legal pads scattered around the house, rather than write it all out, but that’s me.)

Read the full post on Veronica Scott

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Quick Links: Tips for Creating Voice in Your Writing

November 15, 2016 by Publetariat

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

A strong story starts with a strong character who has a strong voice. Or at least that is what I am told. Beth Lewis guest posting at The Writer’s Dig shares tips on how to give your characters clear personalities and voice.

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Tips for Creating Voice in Your Writing

By: Beth Lewis | July 11, 2016

There is a lot of writing advice out there, some good, some not so good, and I’ll try not to repeat it. I’m only going to talk about what works for me, and I hope it can provide some guidance and help for you as you develop yours. So with that caveat in mind, let’s talk about Voice.

This guest post is by Beth Lewis. Lewis was raised in the wilds of Cornwall and split her childhood between books and the beach. She has traveled extensively throughout the world and has had close encounters with black bears, killer whales, and great white sharks. She has been, at turns, a bank cashier, a fire performer, and a juggler, and she is currently a managing editor at Titan Books in London. The Wolf Road is her first novel. Visit her at bethlewis.co.uk or on Twitter @bethklewis.

There are a couple of definitions it’s useful to keep in mind as we go. There is Author Voice and Character Voice. I can’t tell you much about Author Voice. That’s all you and everyone is different. No two Author Voices are the same. It’s how you speak and think and then how you translate that to the page. All I can really say is trust yourself. Be yourself. Don’t try to write like someone else, it’ll sound fake.

Character Voice on the other hand, that I will talk about. A strong voice is what will make your character feel authentic to readers. Several friends who have read The Wolf Road have given me the same comment – I forgot you, my friend, wrote it. They don’t hear me or my voice in the book at all. Even my mother said the same. This is a good thing. It means the character voice was strong enough to overtake mine.

Here are a few things to consider if you’re looking to write a story with a strong voice.

First person vs Third person

Read the full post on The Writer’s Dig

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10 eye-opening tips to add impact to your storytelling

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Writing in Third Person Omniscient vs Third Person Limited

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3 Ways to Improve Your Storytelling

1. Interesting People (The Characters)

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How To Vividly Describe a Setting That You’ve Never Visited by Angela Ackerman

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How I Use Skeleton Outlines to Write Faster

What Are Skeleton Outlines?

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How Novelists Can Work Plot Twists into Their Stories

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Where to Begin Your Book: How to Choose the Best Opening

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Guest post: 5 most common obstacles to writing your book

Guest post: 5 most common obstacles to writing your book

Roadblock thought #1: “I don’t have the time.”

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Internal Dialogue: The Greatest Tool for Gaining Reader Confidence

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Veronica Scott presents: Where Does Your Story Actually Begin?

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First person vs Third person

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