Latest Articles
A Reliable Test to Determine Whether Your Novel Glorifies Evil
For the first six years of my writing life, I didn’t know how to find the exact spot where a story sinks into a bottomless pit of darkness. Nobody around me could agree on which kinds of content deserved an R rating, and I wasn’t sure what my own stance should be. Half of the Christian community claimed that any book containing foul language or violence overexposed audiences to sin. To younger me, this made sense. But the other half of the Christian community cheered over gruesome battles and roguish characters, and they defended those inclusions with the shield and sword of realism. To older me, this seemed like a more progressive approach.
Make Promises, Not Traps: How to Write Honest and Engaging First Lines
I rarely buy stuff on impulse, not even books. When I bring home a book I hadn’t planned to get, it’s because the cover and the first line grabbed my attention. Cover design usually isn’t an author’s responsibility, and even if you’ll be involved in yours, that comes at the end of the writing process. Instead of worrying about that prematurely, I want to talk about the other half of the equation—a story’s beginning.
How to Unlock Your Secret Writing Instincts to Fix a Story That Doesn’t Feel Right
Every story you consume informs your instincts about plot structure, prose, and characters, and when problems crop up in any one of those areas, an alarm sounds at the back of your mind. Unfortunately, no matter how savvy you are at detecting issues, the solutions won’t be as obvious. The disconnect between your ability to identify and straighten out problems is nerve-wracking because you don’t want to write an entire novel without realizing a huge flaw is undermining everything. You need to learn how to interpret your intuition’s signals through three approaches.
How to Avoid Losing Your Story’s Vision in the Details
At the beginning of this year, I taught an English camp in Spain, where I spent most of my daily commutes focused on memorizing the unfamiliar streets. If I took a wrong turn, I might not have been able to reroute myself, so several days passed before I looked beyond the signs and noticed the gorgeous mountain backdrop. Sometimes I slip into the same habit when I’m writing and editing. I miss the big picture because I’m preoccupied with all of the complicated, troublesome scenes.
3 Steps to Take Before Revising Your Novel
With minimal scrolling through search engine results, you can gather an abundance of information on writing stories, but what about the grueling process that follows it? How do you rearrange your mess into an orderly narrative? For most writers, even plotters, the first draft revolves around discovery. You diverge from your outline, notice that the story is more interesting from a secondary character’s point of view, or an entire subplot ends up being pointless. With so many changes to address, you wonder where to start, or maybe you’re even tempted to scrap your premise.
Article Categories
