Subplots are like mini stories, but they must support and enhance the main plot. That last point often gets overlooked, but it’s very important. If you have a subplot that does nothing to broaden or deepen your main plot, then it’s just fluff you need to delete. Subplots should deepen Read more…
When I first started writing professionally, I felt that there was no such thing as writer’s block. In my opinion, ideas were everywhere, and I thought that if you couldn’t write then you were just being lazy. As I’ve become a more experienced writer, I still think ideas are everywhere, Read more…
Scenes are units of story that, when stacked together, make up a whole story. A scene happens in one time and space from one POV and must have a change arc. In this post, we are going to explore three not widely known facts about scenes that will help you Read more…
You may have heard the terms character driven and plot driven and assumed you knew what they meant, but this concept is harder to grasp than it seems. I originally thought I wrote character driven fantasies, but I’ve recently been rethinking that statement. While I believe my stories are very Read more…
After I finish my first draft of a book, I like to take a break and then come back with fresh eyes to do a book analysis before doing any rewriting. My analysis basically entails me rereading the book and marking issues I’d like to correct. While I’m reading, I Read more…
This week is going to seem a little random in topics, but I wanted to share five online resources that have helped me on my author career. These are tools for any part of your author journey, whether you are building a brand, brainstorming a story, researching facts, or just Read more…
We’ve covered Consumer Genres and Content Genres, and now I want to look at Story Genres. This is the last helpful list of genre types I’ve found, and it was created by Blake Snyder in his Cave The Save! books. I am presenting Jessica Brody’s version of it, which is Read more…
Last week we went over Consumer Genres and how readers are drawn to certain ones, and now I want to look at Content Genres. These twelve Content Genre categories divide stories into types based on what the protagonist wants in the story. Since readers follow the protagonist and live the Read more…
One of the first posts I did when I started my website was on book genres, but back then I thought they were as simple as a section in a bookstore or library. I have since learned they are more complex than that. The next few weeks I want to Read more…
I’m back for another post in my Character Under A Microscope Series. One skill a writer must learn is creating characters who are not like you. There are many details that go into character development, and one of those is a sense of humor. But not everyone’s humor is the Read more…