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On Kathy Carmichael’s awesome site, she has a form to aid in creating a short synopsis and plotting your story.  You should go download that now.  I’ll wait. She suggests, on the first page, to list ten events that will help change a character’s core belief and to keep in mind the stages of change.  This opened up a whole new way of looking at structuring character arc for me so I wanted to share what I’d found on the stages of change. The earliest stage of change is known as precontemplation. During the precontemplation stage, people are not considering a change. People in thisRead More →

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I’ve really been struggling lately with process.  I’ve come to a dead end and, it occurred to me, it’s not the story.  It’s how I’m getting the story out.  I always considered myself a planner (vs. a pantser) but it occurred to me when I was actually writing five page descriptions of my heroine’s apartment that maybe I was doing too much planning. But writing the beginning of a story is easy. Or it is for me.  There’s so much to get out, so much you know is going to happen, it’s like you channel the story.  And then you hit that wall, where youRead More →

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An excellent article on how to create a set of rules for what’s selling and, more importantly, what you like reading in your romance novels.  It makes it a lot easier to know what to write when you know what you like. But I needed help—some guidelines when it came to spinning a story that was right for the market. And that’s when I realized I should turn to the bible. No, I wasn’t getting religious. This was all about research and the creation of my own bible—a set of rules to follow and requirements to incorporate. This was all about identifying the sort ofRead More →

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So I’m a third to a half of the way through my manuscript and oh. my. God. I knew the beginning.  I had so much to write, to get all these threads and storylines moving.  I had to write and then condense and rewrite just to make sure I could get in everything important without rambling.  And then I get to this point and I’ve got nothing.  What comes next?  I sort of know the ending, though not the specifics, so where do I go from here?  Some ideas. A preset time (say, 30 minutes) of freewriting, preferably with a program that pushes you toRead More →

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Writing is an affliction, a disease of the soul, a rewiring in the head, like Asperger’s or some other form of autism. Like masturbation, it’s an uncontrollable and compulsive urge. It’s an obsession, a need, a drive. It’s not fun, and rewarding, and entertaining. It’s like having a bad movie play in loop in your head, so that your thoughts are either obsessing on words, or obsessing that your words are crap. It’s tortuous and exhausting, and if you could expel it from your possessed soul like an unwanted demon and be happy and content on a salaried wage, most writers would probably, in theirRead More →

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I know, subtle title, right?  So, I’m revising because I realized I need more sexual chemistry.  And how do I get that?  Subtle sensuality. It’s not that I’m an idiot when it comes to writing the sex.  Some people have told me I’m quite adept at it.  It’s just that, sometimes, when you’re trying to get a hundred other things right, like plot and characters and goals and motivation–you get it, it’s easy to forget that people who just jump into bed aren’t sexy. I started thinking about personal space.  I’m married with kids, so people are in my space all the time.  We hug,Read More →

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Writer’s Digest is studying the romance novel today (and giving you a bit of a glimpse into the book I’m currently reading, On Writing Romance: How to Craft a Novel That Sells by Leigh Michaels). I say: If you’re not a beginner, the first 85 pages are full of info you’ve heard before.  But then, it’s writing gold.  Give it a shot. My favorite, the real “formula” of a romance: What romance novels have in common is this: A romance novel is the story of a man and a woman who, while they’re solving a problem that threatens to keep them apart, discover that theRead More →

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Writing is entirely too hard to not take seriously.  Like the decision to go on living, the decision to decide between life and quality of life, writing is a choice.  It’s not something we’re called to (though it may call to us, like the siren); it’s not something you do halfway, because maybe you can make it.  You commit to it, the way you commit to a career, to a marriage, to having children.  Because once it gets into your blood, there’s no quitting. Is writing fun?  All too rarely.  It can be thrilling, heartachingly frustrating, gut check time, and some of the highest elationRead More →

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I want to land an agent and be published, you want to land an agent and be published.  I scream, you scream, we all scream for representation. Rejection is simply part of the process of being a writer.  It stings, it’s hard to get past.  But what’s the other choice?  Quit?  If that’s an option for you, then it’s probably the best course of action. Most of us, though, can’t imagine a life that doesn’t involve writing.  So, it’s not that quitting isn’t an option in the “I’m too tough to quit” way, it’s that it’s not an option, period. But what should you do? Read More →

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Excellent article about how to plot your novel so the reader can’t put it down.  Also, will explain what an “HCM” is. Today’s best novels make readers so desperate to know what happens next that they’ll stay up reading well past midnight, blistering thumbs and all, until THE END. Then and only then will they be able to relax, their souls flooded with satisfaction, relief and peace. Only to be followed—ideally!—by a gnawing sense of unfulfillment, anxiety and a compulsion to read more books by you. via Writer’s Digest – How to Make Your Novel a Page Turner.Read More →