Category Archives: One Stop For Writers
Powerful Scenes: Using One Stop for Writers’ Informal Scene Map
A while back I profiled some of the custom brainstorming tools at our sister-site, One Stop for Writers, which help take the mystery (and misery) out of story structure. One that I left off that post was our Informal Scene … Continue reading
Occupation Thesaurus: Restaurant Server (Waiter/Waitress)
Jobs are as important for our characters as they are for real people. A character’s career might be their dream job or one they’ve chosen due to necessity. In your story, they might be trying to get that job or … Continue reading
How to Write an Effective Scene with One Stop for Writers’ Formal Scene Map
When it comes to story structure, writers seem to fall into one of three camps: they love it, hate it, or are completely confused by the many iterations of it. With this third group, it’s understandable. Are there 3 Acts, … Continue reading
The Destructive Power of The Lie Your Character Believes
We are often our own biggest critics, aren’t we? Whenever something goes wrong, we feel disappointed, frustrated, upset, or hurt. The fallout might cause others around us to suffer too, causing further anguish and guilt. When this happens, unless the … Continue reading
Quieter Protagonists: 3 Ways to Help Them Steal the Stage
While readers love to see larger-than-life characters with passion, take-charge attitudes, and heaps of boldness and daring, not every protagonist wears an extrovert skin. In fact, looking at real-life demographics for a second, I think there’s a lot more people … Continue reading
Raise the Stakes By Making It Personal
Compelling novels have many different ingredients that make them fascinating to read, but one standard components is a healthy, continual dose of ACTION. The protagonist is always doing something: weighing alternatives, choosing options, making decisions and then acting on them, … Continue reading
Want Memorable Characters? Focus on the Little Things
I love building characters. In fact, “building” is apt, because for me, they come a piece at a time. A brick or two might lock into place as I wrestle with that hateful night demon, Insomnia. Another may manifest with … Continue reading
Milestones that Provide a Valuable Opportunity to Look Back
So, funny story. In January, Becca and I hit 10 years of blogging. TEN YEARS. That’s a lot of time, but also not a lot of time, because we all know time flows differently in the book business. It’s all … Continue reading
Best of the Best: Free Resources to Power Up Your Writing
It doesn’t take many visits to see that providing writers with what they need to succeed is pretty serious business around here. And because the ‘ol pocketbook can be a bit flat this time of year, we wanted to shine … Continue reading
One Stop For Writers December Deal: 25% off All Plans
This is a bit scary, but do you realize we are less than three weeks from Christmas? THREE WEEKS, people. I feel like a giant, multi-tentacled time-eating monster came along and made a buffet out of the calendar. I mean, … Continue reading