Month: <span>September 2022</span>
Month: September 2022

Month: September 2022

Writing That Resonates

Resonate. It’s the word I use most often when talking about writing. But what does it really mean? Take the word home. The dictionary definition is “The place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household.” But that’s not what anyone thinks when they hear the word. They think of their home. What it looks like, what it sounds and smells like, how it feels to be there. They think of the people who occupy it and the often complex emotions they engender. They think about history and family and legacy and…well, you get the...

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What to Do When the Writing Won’t Work

Sometimes the writing just won’t work. The words won’t come, or they’re all wrong when they do. Even if you manage to type something, you delete it seconds later. You’re blocked. We’ve all been there. Don’t panic. It will come back. Meanwhile, I have some ideas to get it back sooner rather than later. Though it’s important to match the techniques with what you’re trying to write and where you are in the process — you’re going to need different techniques when you’re starting a short story than when you’re in the middle of a novel — no matter where...

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Using Short Stories to Grow Your Business

You’re probably not going to make a lot of money writing short stories. Not by directly selling them, anyway. But they are quite useful in a number of other ways, and if used—and written—well, they can help grow your writing business. Reader Magnets A lead magnet is a sales term for something you give away to get contact details so you sell to the person later. When that thing is a piece of writing, we call it a reader magnet. Why is it so important to gather contact details? So you can have an email list to send your newsletter...

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Grammar and Critique

Before putting pen to paper or fingertip to keyboard, there are some basic writing fundamentals we have to discuss. I will try to get through them as swiftly as possible, but they can’t be ignored. Grammar is important ​Before you can write, you have to make sure you can write. If you can’t construct a decent sentence, it doesn’t matter how great your story is, it’s going to be hard to get it across. Though you don’t have to follow the rules of grammar—most writers break them with wild abandon—you have to know them. And more importantly, you have to know...

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Point of View and Tense

Point of view (POV) and tense work together in a way to create different levels of story scope and reader engagement, often by sacrificing one for the other. Choosing which to use can be more art than science and you may feel that personal preference and ease of use trumps either of those. However, as you learn more about these two essential properties of writing and how they interact with each other, you’ll see how picking the right ones can help take your writing to the next level. POV One of the most important decisions you make when writing is...

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Erotica Guide

Let's start with what erotica is. Erotica is fiction where the primary focus is on graphic sex and the lead up to it. Where a thriller is about a ticking clock and action, a western is about gunfights, and a romance is about overcoming barriers to forming relationships, the primary goal of characters in erotic writing is to have sex and the climax (lol) is actual sex described in no uncertain terms.

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Plotters vs. Pantsers

In the eternal debate about what is the best way to write, two terms have come into common usage: plotter and pantser. Plotters are the planners, the outliners, the writers that like everything in place before they write a single word. Pantsers (called so because they “fly by the seat of their pants”) are those who leap into the void, writing their way into and out of situations without a map. Despite the exclusivity of the terms, there are few, if any, writers who are purely one or the other. Most plotters do some improvisation, at least when writing scenes...

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Storyist

Storyist does everything for an aspiring novelist or screenwriter, and unlike many other one-size-fits-all solutions, it does them all pretty well. Unfortunately, it’s only for Mac users, but if that’s you, it’s worth checking out the free trial to see if Storyist feels like a good fit.  The software includes an iOS version for iPads and iPhones so you can access your files and work on them from anywhere. And when we say that Storyist does everything, we mean everything. Here are just a few of the high points. Full Featured and flexible text editor Outlining software Plot planner with...

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Dynalist.io

Dynalist is free outlining software that lives in the cloud so you can log in from any device to see your outlines and work on them. We love the simplicity and ease of us, coupled with the ability to handle complicated outlines.  Spending a few minutes with the tutorial in Dynalist will teach you how to create simple outlines very quickly, with child and parent items indented appropriately and displayed based on your preferences. You can create as many unique outlines as you like, and customize them in all kinds of ways with checklists, colors, images, and H1, H2, and...

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A Publisher Wants My Book!

So a publisher wants to publish your book? That is so exciting! But before you get carried away, let’s take a look at that contract. Unfortunately there are a lot of shady “publishers” out there who just want to take advantage of the fact that there are tens of thousands of writers desperately hoping to be published.  Because you’re a member here at Written Well, we’ll assume that you already know that the old dream of finding a traditional publisher and riding a road to riches was incredibly rare even twenty years ago, and now it’s almost unheard of. Self-published...

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