I Took My Character to Coffee

by Tammy Karasek @TickledPinkTam

No really, I did. I got the idea from when my daughter was in Junior High. Some days she’d return from school and I could tell something was on her mind. Of course when I’d asked, the answer was nothing or I dunno. 

Frustrated and I’d wonder how to get it out of her, I tried all sorts of things. One day, I had an idea and waited to try it. I knew she loved to get a taco over at The Bell, so on a day she came in sad, I asked if she’d like to go for supper there. And she did. 

Avoid This Way to Confuse Your Readers

by Zena Dell Lowe @ZenaDellLowe

One of the things we don’t talk about enough in writing is how easy it is to accidentally confuse the reader. Have you ever been trucking along, totally engrossed in a story, and then all of a sudden, you stumble across a paragraph or a sentence that makes you go, “Huh?” When this happens, it immediately yanks the reader out of the story. And that’s a bad thing. Of course, sometimes this happens because we have made the error – perhaps we’ve been reading too fast and so we missed a key word or clue. If this is the case, it’s easy enough to correct. But if the problem resides with the writer/writing, well, it’s another matter completely.

Creating Heroes: Ten Ways to Reveal the Heroic Qualities of Your Character in Story (Part 1)

Edie here. I wish you could see me—I'm almost jumping up and down from excitement. I have managed to convince filmmaker and story teller extraordinaire, Zena Dell Lowe to join The Write Conversation as a regular contributor. Hopefully many of you are already familiar with her informative Podcast, The Storyteller's Mission. I met Zena years ago when we were both on staff at a writers conference and know first hand her talent for teaching. So please join me in a warm TWC welcome!

Creating Heroes: Ten Ways to Reveal the Heroic Qualities of Your Character in Story

by Zena Dell Lowe @ZenaDellLowe

One of the things that's really important for you to learn as a writer is how to create heroic characters. With only a few exceptions, your main character becomes the hero of your story. Therefore, it’s your job to show the audience that they are genuinely heroic. But that begs the question, how, exactly, can that be accomplished? How do you reveal to the audience the noble qualities of a hero that your main character ought to possess? 

The Magic of Motivation in Your Novel

by Sarah Sally Hamer @SarahSallyHamer

Why do characters do what they do? Just like real humans, characters have extremely good reasons. Knowing WHY a character does something is essential – they MUST have a reason, even if the reader doesn't get it at first. But that's only half of the equation. Writers must also understand and express the reaction that follows.

Follow the "Writing" Recipe

by Linda Gilden @lindagilden

“Mmmmm!”

“Yum! This is the best turkey ever.”

“Oh, my goodness. This is delicious.”

I agreed the turkey was exceptionally good this year. But what was the difference in this one and all the other turkeys we had eaten for holidays and birthdays?

The Senses of the Season Writers Challenge

by Lynn H. Blackburn @LynnHBlackburn

Ah, the scents of the season. 

One of my favorite childhood memories is of waking up to the fragrance of turkey roasting in the oven on Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. I love the spiciness of cut pine, the yeasty aroma of homemade bread, and even the whiff of cardboard and paper from a freshly opened tube of wrapping paper.

How Will Your Hero Die?

by Henry McLaughlin @RiverBendSagas

Today I want to discuss how to add more depth and suspense to our stories. It doesn’t matter what genre you write; this title question applies to all of them.

I Could Have Written That!

by Crystal Bowman

My first big break in publishing came in the mid 1990’s. I received a contract to write a beginning reader series for Zondervan. The first contract was for four books, followed by another contract for four more. With one contract I went from a self-published author of humorous poems, to a children’s author with a major publishing house. 

Writing Truth in Fiction - 4 Tips

 

by Cindy K. Sproles @CindyDevoted

Thumbing through social media crushes my writing soul. These days, an innocent joke among friends leads to accusations of social injustice, racism, or politics. It makes writing a difficult thing. We now have to pour more critically over our work and that makes getting the message out, hard. Given light to highly publicized social injustices, innocent lines of dialogue are now taken as offensive and for Christian writers, the use of God or religion in anything is increasingly difficult. We can hardly allow characters to work through conflict and issues without strong social scrutiny or being tagged insensitive.

5 Tips for Finding Your Readers

Edie here. Today I'm excited to welcome an author I love to The Write Conversation. She has a new release for Christmas and I cannot wait to dive into Her Christmas Dream! Be sure to give Jo a great TWC welcome!

5 Tips for Finding Your Readers

by Jo Huddleston

Remember the scene in the movie “The Princess Diaries,” where Mia (Anne Hathaway) sits on the low stone wall outside of her high school before classes began? A boy came along looking for space to sit there also. He sat on her lap before realizing she was there. Mia told her best friend about the incident and wailed, “I’m invisible, nobody sees me,” or something like that. She didn’t fit in and felt like nobody even saw her much less paid any attention to her. I could identify with Mia when I first tested the waters as a writer.

8 Basic Lies Our Fiction Characters Believe

by Ane Mulligan @AneMulligan

In July, I talked about Core Motivations and how they work with the lie your character believes. Several years ago, my writing was transformed when I learned about the lies our characters believe. Fellow author Amy Wallace studied psychology in college and passed on the informatin to me. Most people believe a lie. It stems in our childhoods and are embedded within us, before we can reason it away.

The Power of the Writer's Descriptive Eye

by Cindy K. Sproles @CindyDevoted

When I began my writing career, a dear friend put his arm around me and said. “Cindy, you write beautifully. The words you choose are different and new but. . .”

Don’t we all hate the but? I cringed as I waited for him to finish. “But it’s like you keep your readers at a distance. The words are on the page in front of me, but you won’t let me step in to see and feel. You need to learn to bring your descriptions to life. Make the reader feel the scene.”

No More Tattletales in Our Writing

by PeggySue Wells @PeggySueWells

Show don’t tell. 

Easier said than done? A quick way to assure your writing is not telling is to eliminate the telling words, the tattletales. These are the words that tell the reader what to think rather than showing and trusting the reader to draw smart conclusions. 

Writer Skill: Understanding Story Pacing

by DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills

Story pacing is the writer’s ability to move the story ahead with action and reaction. It incorporates the genre, plot, characters, and goal of each scene. Writers strive for varied story structure that balances the mood and emotion with actions and reactions. The technique opens the door to achieving a perfect speed for a story. No writer wants the rhythm of their sentences, paragraphs, and scenes to resemble a metronome. 

Four Great Ways for an Author to Hook a Reader

by Sarah Sally Hamer @SarahSallyHamer

Pick a book from your reading pile and read the first line of the story. Did it "hook" you? Did it make you want to read more? Or did you put the book back down and promise yourself you'll read it later

Hooks are that important. They are really the difference between your book being read or not.

Tips for Writing Time Slip Novels

by Kathy Neely @NeelyKneely3628

My newly completed manuscript is my first in a new genre—a time-slip novel shifting between two timelines. One is an emotional journey through Civil War reconstruction, racial tensions, and coming of age characters, and the other is my familiar contemporary setting. As a writer, it proved to be a great learning experience. Time-slip is a common term, but I prefer to reference it as a dual timeline novel. The term ‘time-slip’ conjures up thoughts of time travel. Those are great novels, but they aren’t me. 

Backstory for Writers: When and How

by Ane Mulligan  @AneMulligan

I love backstory but not in the beginning pages of a book. There. I said it. When I mentor new writers, they invariably ask, "But how will the reader know my character? Where she's been and what made her the way she is now?"

For Writers: What – Because – But

by Ane Mulligan @AneMulligan

I used to struggle with GMC (goal, motivation & conflict). I loved the concept, and quickly jumped on the band wagon. I got the book GMC: Goal Motivation and Conflict, by Debra Dixon. I devoured it. It was an easy read, since she uses movies as examples. 

I had no trouble following Dorothy's GMCs as she traversed Oz. Then I closed the book, made some GMC charts, and sat at my desk to put what I'd learned to use. 

Don’t Just Rehash Scripture, Scrapbook It When You Write

by Katy Kauffman @KatyKauffman28

Blah. Limp. Not enough. I scanned my paragraphs again and knew they weren’t sufficient. Where was the oomph? After all, I was talking about Scripture. My words had taken up space, but they weren’t useful or vibrant. I realized I was just rehashing what Scripture said, not adding any nuance or understanding in my book. I needed to “scrapbook” my writing. 

Tips to Meet Those Writing Deadlines

by Lucinda Secrest McDowell @LucindaSMcDowell

How well I remember hearing the phrase, "Interruptions are my ministry!”

At the time I was on the staff of a large church and I totally got it—at any given time I was called up to meet with a parishioner or counsel a walk-in or fill in for another teacher. I was also mothering four young children and learning that key parenting moments occur when there's a knock on the bedroom door or a phone call from school or a simple cry of "Mama....." from another room.

In all those cases it was the distractions from my immediate task that propelled me to an even more important task. I get that.