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Scenes, Scenes, Wonderful Scenes!
The scene is the building block of fiction. Once upon a time, a novel might contain a lengthy description of a field, several flashbacks, and lots and lots of telling. Those days are gone. We’ve become a cinematic society. Scenes speak to us. Pretty words are all well and good, and I do enjoy them myself, but not when they put the story on hold. Not when they bore me. Scenes move the story forward, keep your reader turning the pages, keep them on the edge of their…well, you get it. As Ansen Dibell puts it in her wonderful craft book, Plot: “Creating scenes means finding ways for your story…
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A Gentle Introduction to Story Structure
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Six Ways to Prioritize and Find Time to Write
Time is the world’s most finite resource. Nobody’s making any more of it. I struggle with time, always finding there is never enough of it. If you want to write, you need to make writing a priority and you need to allocate time for it. There are, however, limited things that you can do because nobody has yet figured out how to stretch time. I dream of an app that will stop time so that I can get everything done, alas, to no avail. So I have provided you with seven ways to find time to write. Find Time to Write by Getting Up Early If you’re naturally an early…
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Why You Should Never Edit as You Write
Are you frazzled whenever you sit down to write? Frustrated? Ready to give up? Do you sit, thesaurus in hand, pondering the exact word to describe what you are trying to say? Are you vexed between the choices? Can you not decide whether your heroine’s eyes should be cerulean blue or azure? Please don’t. You should never edit as you write. Editing While You Write Conflicts with How the Brain Works One part of your brain is dominant while you write, and a different part is dominant while you edit. When you stop to examine what you’ve written, or to find exactly the correct word, you move from the creative…
