Category Archives: Writing Lessons
Stuck in No-Man’s-Land: Your Novel’s Middle
If you have hit the point in your draft where you’re looking out at the vast landscape of your novel with no idea where to go next, congratulations…you’ve probably made it to Act 2. I know, I know, there’s an … Continue reading
Determining Your Character’s Emotional Range
I firmly believe that while readers sometimes do connect with our stories, they more often fall in love with our characters. If we want to really pull readers in, we’ve got to make each protagonist relatable and easy to connect … Continue reading
Why You Should Side-Write Your Protagonist’s Origin Scene
Side writing: Any exploratory piece of writing that helps a writer get to know elements of their story but isn’t intended to make its way into a draft in its entirety. Examples include journaling from a character’s perspective, writing a scene … Continue reading
Dropping Breadcrumbs: How to Show a Character’s Emotional Wound Through Behavior
Emotional wounds are transformative and have the power to re-shape a character in many negative ways, impacting their happiness, their self-worth, and causing mistrust and disillusionment to skew their worldview. This critical piece of backstory is key to understanding their … Continue reading
Does Your Story Idea Need a Makeover? Try Cratedigging
Not all story ideas are winners. But they could be, if they only had that spark of originality and relevance to make them stand out. The irony is that the unique angle you’re looking for may require you to borrow … Continue reading
4 Ways to Fix a Boring Story
Is your story boring? Would you know or acknowledge it if it was? No one wants to admit that their story is slow, lackluster, or zzzzz. But hey, that’s what critique partners and editors are for. If recent feedback makes … Continue reading
The Best Resource for Planning Your NaNoWriMo Novel
Can you believe it? We’re less than 10 days from the biggest, craziest, event in Writerville: National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). That means 50,000 words written in one month, and all the coffee, stale pizza, and Skittles you need to … Continue reading
What You Can Learn from Rhetorical Questions in Your Manuscript
It is such an easy thing to do. Once you become aware of author intrusion and what that looks like in limited third person, first person, or deep POV, the easy workaround becomes a rhetorical question. A rhetorical question is used to … Continue reading
Why Writers Should Consider NaNoWriMo in 2020
Let’s not mince words: 2020 has been a real crap sandwich. COVID has caused all sorts of struggles, anxiety, and challenges. Some of you have had work disrupted. Others wanted to travel to see loved ones and couldn’t. All of … Continue reading
Awesome Writing Tips From 6 Famous Writers
As I always say on Bang2write, there are no specific writing rules to break, just risks to take … That said, there are ‘best practices’! This is why it can be a good idea to check out what others who’ve … Continue reading