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A character’s ‘arc’ describes their internal journey over the course of a story, generally occasioned by the external events they encounter as it unfolds. If the person they are when they begin the book is where they ‘launch’ and the person they are at the end is where they ‘land’, then the path from one to the other is their ‘arc.’ Every fictional character worth their salt, from Harry Potter to …
[Read more...] about Why Do Different Characters Need Different Arcs?
Self-publishing authors are experts at spinning plates, splitting their time between writing, editing, publishing, and marketing. Happily, every so often you get the rare plate that almost spins itself, requiring the bare minimum of attention to keep working in your favor. That’s the reading order checklist – a short list of your work that takes fifteen minutes to set up and then only needs to be …
[Read more...] about The Quick, Easy Way To Create A Reading Order Checklist
Sometimes, you’re midway through a story and you suddenly realize what you need to change to make it work. A later development requires some earlier foreshadowing, or you need to remove a detail so your new path makes sense. It’s a lightbulb moment, and often the point where a story really comes together for many writers, but what do you do if you can’t make the change? In fact, what do you do if …
[Read more...] about ‘Retcon’: How To Rewrite Details In An Ongoing Series
Sometimes, a story demands that the author use a risky device. It might be a cliché – a worn-out metaphor or overused plot line – or it might be a leap in logic – an unreasonable coincidence or contrived solution. Usually, the best thing to do is get creative and avoid falling back on a device that threatens to irritate the reader, but writing is an art, not a science, and that isn’t always …
[Read more...] about Improve Your Story By Hanging A Lampshade On It
Launching a series is golden. It’s that moment in Minesweeper when you hit the right square and a safety zone unfurls. You have eager readers for your next book. You have an agent waiting to read your manuscript. You have characters and backdrops for a long, long time. Or... do you? It’s not easy to create a protagonist – or even a small cluster of central characters – who can keep readers’ …
[Read more...] about How To Write A Character Who Can Carry A Series
Writing one book is an amazing feat, one that depends on an incredible investment of time, energy and talent. Sometimes, though, the work that goes into that book creates a world, story or cast of characters so rich that you want to go back again. At this point you’re considering a sequel. Writing a sequel is a difficult endeavor that can pay off big time. It requires an even more in-depth …
[Read more...] about The Truth About Sequels: How To Improve On Your First Book
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