Love them or hate them, cliffhangers are popular and utilized in lots of books nowadays, even the ones that never get (or intend) a sequel to follow up the ending. So what’s the difference between a cliffhanger that makes a reader pick up the next book and the one that makes the reader chuck the… Continue reading Writing the Cliffhanger
Tag: write
When to Begin & End Chapters
When writing a novel, writers must consider a lot of factors: characterization, pacing, plot, etc. Take a look around the internet and you’ll find tons of articles on how to begin a novel, outline a novel, flesh out a novel, and end a novel, but when it starts to get into the nitty gritty details,… Continue reading When to Begin & End Chapters
Writing About Grief
As someone who usually writes science fiction and fantasy, I decided to take a sharp turn during these last few months of 2021 to write my first contemporary. It’s a verse novel, centered on the loss of my mother when I was 11. (For those of you who are new to my blog, she died… Continue reading Writing About Grief
What Writers Can Learn from Reading Their OLD Work
I’ve been writing stories ever since I learned how to write. I’m not kidding. My first pieces of work go back to when I was 4 years old. My first story was a 5-page rambling piece about my new husky throwing a party so that the two older dogs would attend and possibly befriend him.… Continue reading What Writers Can Learn from Reading Their OLD Work
How to Plot a Series and Make Every Book Stand Out
As an author with three series under my belt, I’m often asked how to plot a series, and I thought it was finally time to share a few tips. First thing is first, anyone considering traditional publishing should make book one a standalone. Don’t get me wrong. It’s great to have the dream of writing a series,… Continue reading How to Plot a Series and Make Every Book Stand Out
What Happened When I Opened an Old Manuscript that I Hadn’t Read in Three Years
Three years ago, I shelved a manuscript that I loved dearly but had to set aside in order to work on another project gaining interest in the market. It wasn’t a hard decision. At the time, I had just finished its third rewrite and, though it had recently won a writing contest, my other piece… Continue reading What Happened When I Opened an Old Manuscript that I Hadn’t Read in Three Years
How to Name Your Characters
Naming your characters, especially your main characters, can feel like a daunting task. Some enjoy the thrill of it; others struggle a lot, and never quite feel like they found the “right” name. I, for one, love naming characters. I often joke that baby name books are some of my favorite reads and, in fact, I’ve… Continue reading How to Name Your Characters
When You Don’t Write As Much As You Should
Recently, I didn’t write as much as I should have over a few weeks. Or should I say, I didn’t write as much as I thought I should have. Let me break it down. Every first of the month, I take a moment to look at my stats and see how much I've written. In March, I wrote… Continue reading When You Don’t Write As Much As You Should
Looking Back on my Pantser Novel
“Are you a pantser or a plotter?” is a common question writers hear. Why? There’s something inherently interesting about how someone turns a blank page into a 350-page novel. Sure, it's easy to say that one word after another leads to a sentence, which eventually becomes a chapter, before those chapters build a book. But there’s so… Continue reading Looking Back on my Pantser Novel
2020: The Strangest Writing Year (Hopefully?)
Every year I like to reflect and talk about expectations, goal-setting, writing life, changing trends, etc., and as strange as this past year has been, I still want to keep that tradition going. That said, looking back, January feels like it happened three years ago, not eleven months. In fact, right at the beginning of… Continue reading 2020: The Strangest Writing Year (Hopefully?)
