Discovery writers, or write-by-the-seat-of-their-pantsers, may shy away from anything that looks too much like outlining or planning. That includes story structures--surely the idea is to fit your story into the structure before you start writing? Sh ...
I may be a writer but I love using visual cues to organize my writing. I really like and have used index cards to arrange scenes and beats, but that usually requires physical items. I know you can have virtual index cars in Scrivener, but in Scrivene ...
First, let's define some terms. Draft Zero is the very first draft, the one you don't dare show anyone because even you haven't read it yet. You don't know what's in there. You don't know if it even tells a complete story yet. The First Draft come ...
It's nearly that time again: National Novel Writing Month. Every November I and thousands of other writers challenge ourselves to write 50,000 words in just 30 days. It's a big goal, and it's really hard, and it's a lot of fun. It's also the way I dr ...
It's finally here! THE MONSTER NOVEL STRUCTURE WORKBOOK is available for pre-order, releasing on September 15, 2018! Beta readers agree, this book will change the way you novel. “I feel like I've won the novel-writing lottery! For the first time ...
Right up front I'm going to be honest and disclose that I have a horse in this race and his name is Plotty McPlotface. It took me a long, long time to figure out how much plotting I needed to make a working novel happen, and yes, I started out pantsi ...
A few weeks ago Ms. Lovett (@lovettromance) urged me and some of the others in our writing group to hop into a Twitter chat (#rwchat, more on that later). She's become very involved, not only in participating but in helping to organize and run these ...
I first heard about National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in 2003. It was my senior year of high school and I was game to try. I was, after all, preparing for a career as a novelist. The project I started, still known as UNTITLED MOBSTER CAPER, ha ...
I haven't written fanfiction in years, but there was a time when it played a big role in my life. Way back in the dark ages, also known as the late 90s, early 00s, I was a tween. We weren't called tweens then, that slang hadn't become popular yet. ...
