Time Line Helps You Plot

Time Line Helps You Plot
I know that my new novel will take place over a 98 hour span of time. So, I’m working with those 98 hours, creating and structuring the time line of the story in these ways.

8 Ways to Enrich Your Character

Character Revision: 8 Ways to Jumpstart a Make Over
You have a first draft, but you realize that your character needs work. How do you retrofit a character when you revise?
I don’t think of a personality transplant. Instead, I try to add to and enrich a character. Here are 8 suggestions on how to revise your [...]

Develop Sympathy with Character Traits 9

Use Character Traits to Make Your Character Sympathetic
Yesterday, we looked at 9 character traits that can be used to develop sympathy for your character. Today, we’ll look at using those traits in your story. It’s not enough just to tell yourself, or write on a checklist, that your character has these traits and is, therefore, [...]

5 Plotting Mistakes

This entry is part 4 of 8 in the series Build a Stronger Plot
Do you make these 5 plotting mistakes?

Are you too nice to your characters?
Low tension. Give characters large, overwhelming obstacles to overcome. Of course, you love this dear fellow you created and like any good parent, you want only

interior thoughts

Interior Thoughts Reveal Character
I spent time yesterday adding more interior thoughts to a character. My critiquers felt they needed to know the character better at this point in the story. I’ve done the requisite “Show, Don’t Tell,” but readers still felt they needed more to really know the character. What does she FEEL here? What [...]

Goal disaster in Novel Revision

A scene goal must have a showdown
I’m revising my WIP novel and I’m at the end of the first section of the story. In this section, my character lays out a specific goal, and of course,

boring characters in novels

I’m worried. :-/
Are my characters boring?
One-Note Characters
One common difficulty is to create characters with a wide range of emotions. Yes, your character may be chronically sad or mad; but

YWriter

While my WIP novel is out with readers, I thought I’d look at my process for this novel and how it differed from others.
Writing Process for Novels Vary Widely
Writing process varies. First, my process was different for this novel. I find this to be always true, that what worked for one novel, won’t work for [...]

Connecting Emotional and Narrative Arcs

This entry is part 8 of 13 in the series How to Write a Novel
Connecting Emotional and Narrative Arcs
The emotional arc is the inner conflict; the narrative arc is the outer conflict. How do you get these two arcs to mesh?
Peter Dunne, in his book Emotional Structure: Creating the Story Beneath the Plot has [...]