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Punctuation in Dialogue Tags: 4 Guidelines for Correct Punctuation in Dialogue
Full disclosure: I’m a nitpicker. Or, in a more flattering light, you could say I’ve got an eye for detail. This was only encouraged during my college days (farewell oh my college days of five weeks ago) as a writing center tutor, and also being in a major that highly emphasized technical writing. I mean, […]
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5 Tips to Making the Most out of a Writers Conference
I am at a writers conference!!!!!!! (In case you can’t tell, I’m excited) The conference I’m at is the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference, or BRMCWC for short (not that the acronym is much shorter than the actual name). It’s an annual conference of about 500 writers who identify as Christian/write Christian pieces to […]
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How to Write Compelling Battlefield Tactics: 3 Things to Consider Before Your Characters Grab Their Swords
You know how you have a couple topics that you’ll pick apart when you see other writers writing them wrong? Me. This topic. I’ve seen too many writers consider battle just to be a huge clash between opposing forces and not consider even the tiniest little bit battlefield tactics and strategy. Now, I’m not a […]
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Inspiration For Authors #1: Crinoids
Have you ever run into something so cool that you just had to scream about it and/or include it in one of your stories? That’s essentially what this “inspiration” thread is for. Don’t mind me as I geek out😊 My first post is on crinoids! You might know them better as sea lilies (photo above), […]
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Fulfilling Promises: 3 Tips to Make the Reader Come Back for More
The last time I talked about plot, I discussed making promises – this time, I’m going to go over the different ways you want to fulfill those promises. As a reminder, a promise is when a writer tells the reader, implicitly or explicitly, what to expect. If a child knows their mother is bringing them […]
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Desire: The Heart of Writing Compelling Characters
May 21, 2022 Desire is at the heart of any action humans take. We want so we act so as to achieve that want. I’m hungry. I want to impress her. I want to be a good human being. Okay, so I might be exaggerating a bit when I say any action, and I’m certainly […]
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Author is Always Right: Own Your Story’s Worldbuilding
May 19, 2022 Look around. Have you ever noticed how much of a crazily interconnected world we live in? We live in a world where, if you over fish, then the orcas eat the sea otters. Without the sea otters, the sea urchins multiply. The sea urchins eat the kelp forests. And as the kelp […]
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Promises, Promises: Increasing Reader Investment in Stories
May 17, 2022 I promise to bring you back a cupcake. Imagine a five-year-old, sitting by the window and waiting for her mom to come home and hold out that cupcake—white swirls of icing with green sprinkles. Maybe chocolate, maybe vanilla. Or what if it’s something special, like red velvet? Then the mom comes back. […]
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How to Write a Book
14 May 2022 Persevere and don’t look back. Seriously. Finishing your first book is the hardest. I know the temptation to go back and make that sentence perfect, to change that character’s name for the fifth time, to rewrite that first page until it stands out to everyone, is almost overwhelming. But you have to […]