WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®

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Search Results for: false belief

The Emotional Wound Thesaurus: How False Beliefs, Fears, and Human Needs Are Connected

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Just like real people, our characters have a plethora of past experiences that play a part in molding who they become. While these experiences, good and bad, affect their personalities, it is often the harrowing ones that have the most impact. An emotional wound is a negative event from … [Read more...] about The Emotional Wound Thesaurus: How False Beliefs, Fears, and Human Needs Are Connected

Become a Story Genius: How Your Character’s Misbelief Drives Plot

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We're welcoming story coach Lisa Cron to the blog today. Lisa has some great thoughts on the inner struggle happening inside a protagonist, and how defining the why behind this struggle is the key to unlocking a powerful story that will capture your readers. Story is not about what happens on … [Read more...] about Become a Story Genius: How Your Character’s Misbelief Drives Plot

The Big Lie: Encouraging your Readers to Suspend Disbelief

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We are happy to welcome Laura Pauling, who has pushed through the publishing craziness to release her newest book! I had the pleasure of reading an advanced copy of HEIST while I was on vacation, and, as you can see from my Goodreads review, I THOROUGHLY enjoyed it. Laura is kind of...well, let's … [Read more...] about The Big Lie: Encouraging your Readers to Suspend Disbelief

Character Arcs: Making a Long Story Short

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A well-structured story uses events (also called story beats) to move the narrative forward — with compelling issues, rising stakes, and an organic sense of cause and effect — toward a surprising-yet-inevitable resolution. At the same time, our story’s plot events force our characters to react, … [Read more...] about Character Arcs: Making a Long Story Short

Want Readers to Connect to Your Character? Include this Element.

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Some characters have more shape and weight than others, feeling so authentic we can almost believe they walked right out of the real world. Their emotions, vulnerabilities, needs, and desires ring so true, we can’t help but be pulled in by them. These characters hold us hostage while we read, and … [Read more...] about Want Readers to Connect to Your Character? Include this Element.

Using Physical Pain to Show a Character’s Past Trauma

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There doesn’t seem to be much info out there to tell writers how to realistically capture emotions and trauma while still leaving room for plot, characterization, and genre tropes. The most common problem I see is that the character THINKS about their past trauma—they have flashbacks and … [Read more...] about Using Physical Pain to Show a Character’s Past Trauma

Story Not Behaving? Try Going Deeper into Structure

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With all the writing advice out there, we know that some “writing rules” we hear are more like guidelines. However, story structure is important not just for our writing but also for our readers—creating their overall sense of our story—so we should consider the risks before ignoring … [Read more...] about Story Not Behaving? Try Going Deeper into Structure

What Is Your Character’s Emotional Shielding and Why Does It Matter?

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In the real world, we’re all products of our pasts. Good and bad, the people, events, and situations we’ve encountered have influenced us in profound ways, impacting our morals and beliefs, our day-to-day habits, our personal preferences, even our personality traits. This should be as true for our … [Read more...] about What Is Your Character’s Emotional Shielding and Why Does It Matter?

The Author’s Guide to Redeeming Villains

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Have you ever fallen in love with a story villain? Or at least found yourself liking him or her somewhat against your will? Seems a little weird, experiencing all the happy feels for this character, but I think we’ve all been there. When a villain is well written and well rounded, they can … [Read more...] about The Author’s Guide to Redeeming Villains

Character Introductions: Making the Right Impression

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Many aspects of writing can be hard to get right, especially in our first draft. For just two examples: Put those two aspects together, and we have the double difficulty of introducing our characters at the beginning of our story to create the right impression for readers. We all know that … [Read more...] about Character Introductions: Making the Right Impression

For the Press

For the Press Have questions about Writers Helping Writers® and its bestselling Thesaurus Writing Guide series? Authors Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi love working with the press, and would be happy to answer your questions. Contact them here or scroll down for links to bios, headshots, and … [Read more...] about For the Press