Category Archives: Emotion
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
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
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
6 Tricks to Layer on Stakes
Stakes are what are at risk in a story. It might be that the protagonist’s life is at risk, or perhaps a romantic relationship, or maybe the opportunity to go on a long-awaited trip (Hello, Covid!). But I find this … Continue reading
Character Introductions: Making the Right Impression
Many aspects of writing can be hard to get right, especially in our first draft. For just two examples: With our story beginning, we might struggle to find a good balance between a throat-clearing boring scene (before getting to the … Continue reading
3 Ways to Differentiate Your Characters
We’ve invited Resident Writing Coach Sacha Black to give us an extra dose of wisdom as she’s just released a new book that I think will help a lot of writers: Anatomy of Prose: 12 Steps to Sensational Sentences. This … Continue reading
What Is Emotional Context And Why Does Your Story Need It?
Have you ever had an editor or critique partner say “go deeper”? And you throw up your hands and glare at the screen because you DID go deeper. Deep point of view is a writing technique that aims to create … Continue reading
Breathe Life into Your Prose with the Sense of Touch
Humans are social beasts: we live together, we yearn for the comfort of quality time, of family memories, and of physical closeness. But right now, touch has a bad rep. In the midst of a global health crisis, humanity must … Continue reading
How a Career Can Reveal Your Character’s Deeper Layers
Did you know that before Becca became an author and writing coach, she was a teacher? It’s true. And if you know her, you’re probably thinking, I can see that. It makes sense. Why? Because when you think of a … Continue reading
How to Build Powerful Character Relationships
Character relationships are, in many ways, the glue that holds a story together. Almost every tale has at least one relationship at the heart of it, often more. Rarely can a character sustain a story on their own; they need … Continue reading