Hi friends! I have a few Halloween-ish writing posts lined up for you, and this is the first one! I gathered up this list of magic spells because if you’re writing fantasy or paranormal stories, you might want to work some wizard or witch magic (or “magick”) into the story, whether they are fun, cute spells or deadly serious. You
Category: Writing Matters
Hey, writer friends! It’s Work in Progress Wednesday, and as a lot of you know, that’s when I post an excerpt of a work in progress and invite you to do the same in the comments section. And for the regulars, I have an announcement: I’d pulled back to doing WIP Wednesday every other month due to the demands of
If you’re writing a conversation between two or more characters, you may run into the issue of characters talking at the same time. This is an easy thing to pull off in a TV show or a movie, but slightly trickier in a novel or a short story, so I thought I’d address it! (By the way, I’m going to
If you’re like me, you put a lot of thought into naming characters, which is why I make these lists of names! If you have millennial characters in a U.S. based novel, story, or screenplay, you might want to give them names that were popular when they were born. Some people in older generations can occasionally forget that millennials have
I wrote this list of romantic scene ideas because as a romance novel editor, I often ask an author to put in another romantic scene—one in which the reader can tell the main characters are really falling in love (or already there!) I also decided to write it because lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about iconic romance scenes in
Hi, everyone! I hope your summer is treating you right so far! And if it isn’t, let’s distract ourselves with creating…that’s one of the best coping skills I know. It’s Work in Progress Wednesday, when we all share excerpts of what we’re writing! I went over the guidelines yesterday, so I won’t belabor them again. I’ll just tell you that
I write a lot of posts about developing writing skills. I share help with plotting, character development, descriptions, and much, much more. But the best skill you’ll ever learn as a writer is setting boundaries, and it’s something I’m getting much better at lately. This is such an important and difficult topic, and I hope this post helps! First, let’s