Coming back from a writing dead-end; deadly writing sins; another reason to make your non-writer friends question your sanity; when a crit group sucks the life from your story; incredible writing resource you should already be using, slacker.Read More →

That’s my actual wall. Those are two of the seven GMC charts I have hung there. My two main protagonists, actually. On the top left, you’ll see an extra note: the lesson they need to learn by the end of the story. In this novel, my antagonist and her minion don’t have these. Because they fail to learn a lesson; they’re villains. Not all antagonists are villains, though. In some stories, an antagonist could be a friend or family member or even lover. In order to for the antagonist have a happy ending, they need to arc as well.Read More →

Your characters are fighting, when they’re not headhopping. Creativity scares you. Using your own goals to build character and how to make writing a second book easier than the first. Especially since the first will drive you c-r-a-z-y.Read More →

If you read a book or watch a movie, and you’ve learned even a little about GMC, then you can figure out a character’s GMC… If you read the biography, you can clearly see where I found these goals and motivations. But, let me say this: these could be better. Analysis below.Read More →

How to write women if you aren’t one, the best movies about writers, and famous writers get their revenge by noting how many rejections they received.Read More →

A look at me and the synopsis through three posts spread out over time. Why they’re hard, what I learned, and how it can help you.Read More →

I think I opened one hell of a can of worms when I offered to post one of my sample biographies last week.  Three hours later, I’ve done the prep work and I’m ready to post. The biography I’m including today is for a secondary character in the manuscript I’m working on now.  Because I wanted to make comments so you could see my process, I typed it into MS Word, used the Review>Comment button to add info along the right side (in pretty blue bubbles) and, occasionally, in the text itself (but also in blue).   You can download the PDF here* and itRead More →

I was right. Also, a whole bunch of info on how you’re querying and storytelling: you’re doing it wrong. Well, maybe not you. But a lot of people are. And, how will I know if he really loves me…. no, wait. That’s Whitney Houston. How will I know if I found the right person to critique my writing? Better.Read More →

I wanted to work on GMC for my secondary characters. I’d already written maybe fifty pages of info and backstory on my main characters. But, I couldn’t figure out what my secondary characters wanted. Why did my villain steal? From charity money to build a facility for children? I read somewhere, and strongly believe, a character can do anything as long as they have good and truthful motivation. This was a big deal to me. And I had five secondary characters to do this with. They mattered. They needed their own stories, at least in their minds. Yeah, I know, that sounds weird.Read More →

Busy week, so a little light on links today. But, bonus! I’m going to share more info on each link. You’re welcome. And through the wonders of the Wordpress, I am away at a training as this post goes live. In fact, I’m probably in class right now. Technology is kind of bad ass.Read More →