3 “Easy” Steps for Cutting Words from Your Manuscript
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1M ago
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy Deleting words from your novel is easier than you think. Before I dive in, I'm guest posting at Writers in the Storm this week, with  A Handy Trick for Brainstorming Your Plot. Come on over and say hello! Getting rid of thousands of words from your manuscript is daunting. Having to cut tens of thousands of words can make you want to curl up in a ball and cry. But trimming down a novel doesn’t have to be a huge hack and slash deal. You don’t have to rip your baby to shreds and gut the wonderful words that make the story shine. In fact, throwing away e ..read more
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How to Write Description When You Hate Writing Description
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2M ago
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy Every novel needs description, even when you don't wanna write it. I dislike writing description. Which is funny since I write science fiction and fantasy—two genres known for their abundant descriptions. I’d rather focus on what’s going on in the story and less on what everything looks like, but describing the world is a must for genre writers. If we don’t set the scene, the reader can’t ground themselves and be drawn into the story. So, yeah, super important. And not only for genre writers. Description is everywhere in every novel—what the characters look ..read more
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Turning Good Writing into Great Writing
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4M ago
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy The first words you write aren’t always the right words to use. Tuesday, I spent at least a half hour writing one line—and it wasn’t an opening line. I was working on a new scene for my science fiction detective novel, and it’s an emotion-packed scene right after the Dark Moment that tacks onto the All Is Lost Moment. It’s one those “this is where the protagonist reveals secrets they’d been keeping from someone important in their life, and it goes badly” situations. I reached the end of the scene and had my upset character storm off, and then dropped the last l ..read more
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The Faceless Villain: What to do When Your Protagonist Is the "Bad Guy"
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4M ago
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy Not every story has a villain at its center—sometimes the problem is the protagonist. For a lot of writers, the hardest-to-write conflict is the Person vs. Self conflict. Quite often, the antagonist is a physical being the protagonist can physically fight. But in a PvS conflict, there's no one plotting against the protagonist. The antagonist is something to overcome, such as depression, or grief, or a self-destructive streak that’s core to who the protagonist is and a flaw they need to fix by the end of the novel. These stories are more challenging, but there’s ..read more
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When Stuck in a Scene, Look Around
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4M ago
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy Sometimes the answer to making a scene work is inside the scene itself. I’ve been struggling with a major turning point chapter revision the past week, and one scene was really giving me a headache. It’s the end of Act Two, and the scene that triggers my protagonist’s Dark Night of the Soul and All Is Lost moments. So yeah, it’s important. What’s worse, is that I knew how the chapter needed to end (because of those oh-so-critical moments), I just wasn’t sure how to get there based on where the story was after all the new revisions. I had to connect Point A with ..read more
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Did You Choose the Best Words to Describe Your Setting?
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4M ago
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy Your reader doesn’t know what you’re picturing when you write a scene. Make sure they see what you see. Setting is a vital component of a novel, but it's one of the more awkward things to write naturally. People don't stop and describe the landscape, so having characters who do can feel forced and knock a reader right out of the story. It gets even more complicated when you think about how pretty much every scene needs its setting described so readers know where they are. But if you over describe, or use the wrong details, readers can get bored and start skimmi ..read more
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Decisions, Decisions: Creating Character Choices That Matter
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4M ago
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy A plot is just the series of choices a character makes in a story. Making a decision is one of the most important things your characters will ever do. Not only does it drive the plot, it creates tension and unpredictability in the story. Readers turn the page to see what happens next, and decisions are all about the "next." But there's a catch. Readers have to care about the outcome of that choice. “Should I have the eggs or the cereal?” is a choice, but no one is going to stay up late to see how that turns out. Because the other half of choosing is the fear ..read more
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Three Questions to Get to the Heart of Your Story
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4M ago
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy The story is why readers picked up your book.  Writing is such a strange thing. As writers, we get these characters and stories in our heads and put them down on paper. Sometimes we know exactly what happens and write what we imagine, other times we have a character shouting in our heads and we transcribe what they tell us. We all have different processes and write with different voices. What I find interesting, is that no matter what genre we write in or what age group we write for, one thing stays the same. The story. Not the plot, not the series of ..read more
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7 Ways Your Characters Can Screw up Their Decisions
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4M ago
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy Making the wrong choice isn't good in life, but it's great for plotting a novel. As people, we want to make the right choice, so it's only natural that those are the choices that first come to us as we write a scene. The problem there, is that "doing the right thing" doesn't usually cause the wonderful conflict we need to craft compelling stories. (But when it does it's writing gold.)  Lifehack had a great post about how not to mess up your decisions. The writer in me instantly saw what a fantastic guide it was for crafting characters with bad decision-m ..read more
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Behind the Red Pen: What to Look for When Vetting an Editor
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4M ago
By Jaire Sims, @JaireSims Part of the Indie Authors Series JH: Choosing the right editor for your manuscript is more than just picking the first name on a list or result page. Jaire Sims shares what you need to know when vetting an editor for your novel. Jaire Sims lives, works, and writes where he was born and raised, Chicago. After spending years with social anxiety and undergoing counseling, he was eventually diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum. Still, he overcame the challenges before him, graduating from Monmouth College with a Bachelor's Degree in Communication Studies. Off an ..read more
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