Cause and Effect Is a Powerful Thing – How to Make Awesome First Lines
carriejonesbooks I started writing about first lines last week and I promised I’d write a bit more about it. And here’s the thing: the first line of your novel starts the…
plot
Writing Tip Wednesday: Finding Your Big Wonder
The Big Wonder So, stories tend to need that internal motivator/quest/motivation to keep their plot chugging forward and to keep the reader engaged. As you know, I talk about desire…
Old Rockers Rocking and Trust Issues
As you heard in our random thought, this week we went to see some early 1990s bands in concert. They were – well, they were old. The concert hall wasn’t…
Writing Your Darn Story, The Easiest Plot Structure Ever
Are you ready? Because I’m writing this while I have a fever, which means it might be a weird, wild ride. A lot of the writers I teach get really…
Writing Weirdly – When You aren’t exactly a plotser or a pantser
While I was at Vermont College my first semester, one of the teachers, Alison McGhee, mentioned off-handedly that when she wrote one of her many brilliant, amazing books she wrote…