Write

Articles about craft.

Quick Link: Writing in Third Person Omniscient vs Third Person Limited

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Over at Reedsy they have a great post describing the differences between third person omniscient voice and third person limited. It is really well done so if this is something you had questions about, go check it out. I know I learned a lot.

~ * ~

Writing in Third Person Omniscient vs Third Person Limited

November 17, 2016

You may have a clear vision for what or who your book is about — but do you know how to tell your story? One of the first major decisions you’ll face as an author is determining the style of narration in your book. Is your story best served by writing in first person, third person, or — if you’re feeling adventurous — second person?

In this post, we’ll be looking at the options available to authors writing in the third person: omniscient and limited. In third person omniscient narration, the narrator has a god’s eye view of the story and is privy to all characters’ thoughts, as well as knowledge of the past and future. Then there’s third person limited, where the narrator’s scope of knowledge is intimately tied to a particular character — very often the protagonist.

For those of you who understand images better than words, we have included a fun graphic mystery that illustrates the power of both viewpoints. If you’re ready to start, just scroll on down!

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Link: 6 Ways Grammarly Can Improve Your Writing And Editing

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Have you tried Grammarly? I read about it from over at The Creative Penn. It is a program that is supposed to help your writing by checking your grammar as you work. There is a free and a paid version and both come with browser plugins and even a download to work with MS Office. If this works as advertised it would be quite useful. Nothing replaces a professional editor for eBook work, but perhaps you could at least cut your costs a little by fixing what you can first.

~ * ~

6 Ways Grammarly Can Improve Your Writing And Editing

Cause you don’t want your editor to need a red pencil this big.

by

We rarely see the errors in our own writing, which is why I’m a super fan of using professional editors to improve my own books.

But there are things we can do to improve the manuscript BEFORE sending it to an editor.

Grammarly is one of those useful tools that can sort out the basic errors, enabling you to improve your writing and learn as you go. It can also help with emails and online writing, where paying a pro editor isn’t cost effective.

Why consider a tool like Grammarly?

As indie authors, we are 100% responsible for producing books that are not only readable and entertaining / informative but also ones that are mistake-free. When readers are distracted by misspellings and grammatical errors their reading experience is going to suffer. And that means your reputation as an author is going to suffer as well.

The Kindle also has a function for readers to report typos and if you get too many of these in a book, you’re going to get a quality notification.

For this reason, we always want to use professional editors and proofreaders when we’re publishing our books. Nothing can replace the editing and proofreading of a human being, especially one who specializes in your genre.

However, the messier a manuscript is when you send it to a professional for proofreading or editing, the more it’s going to cost you to improve and fix.

This is where the online app, Grammarly, steps into the picture.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

 

Save

Quick Link: 4 Simple Tips To Catch More Errors When Proofreading

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

I am always so jealous of people who can edit their own work, quickly. That is why this article written by from Stand Out Books caught my attention. Even if you are one of those clever people who can edit on the fly, you still might find something worth reading.

~ * ~

4 Simple Tips To Catch More Errors When Proofreading

by

Proofreading will make your story better. There are few guarantees anyone can give about art – even fewer that apply to every individual – but that’s one of them. Proofreading, in fact, is the single most effective way to make your story better; a magic bullet that can transform a piece of writing from unpublishable to unbelievable.

It’s a shame, then, that it’s something from which our brains seem inherently repulsed. If you’re an author, you’ve probably had the experience of sitting down to proofread a piece of work and ending up doing anything else. Writer’s block is a piece of cake next to proofer’s block. What’s more, our brains hate proofreading so much that they’ll even convince us we can’t do it, or that it doesn’t need doing, or that it doesn’t need doing yet – anything to avoid carrying out this onerous, completely necessary task.

As an editor who has proofread many different works, I’ve got some experience in convincing my brain to stop complaining and get to work. Some of that is training, some is experience, and some is minor tips and tricks that make the whole endeavor easier to pull off. In this article, I’ll be sharing four of those basic tips and explaining how they can make your proofreading easier, more effective, and more likely to happen in the first place. Before that, though, I need to clear something up.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Link: 3 Ways to Improve Your Storytelling

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

The always impressive Janice Harding has a great article on what to do to improve your storytelling.  These tips work well with a bare bones outline approach we talked about in a previous post. Head on over to Fiction University to learn more!

~ * ~

3 Ways to Improve Your Storytelling

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

This week’s Refresher Friday takes another look at three ways to improve your storytelling. Enjoy!

My high school creative writing teacher had the best definition of story that I’ve ever seen.

A story is interesting people, solving interesting problems, in interesting ways.

The genius is in its simplicity. Interesting is subjective and open to so many possibilities, which allows for everyone to approach it in their own creative way. But the core idea is solid. People solving problems. At the heart of every story is a problem to be solved (the conflict).

To improve our storytelling skills, all we have to do it focus on the three things that make a story a story.

1. Interesting People (The Characters)

Even in formula-heavy action stories, character stands out. Everyone knows James Bond, or Harry Potter, or that gal Dorothy Gale from Kansas. A great story has characters who offer something interesting to readers.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Link: How To Vividly Describe a Setting That You’ve Never Visited by Angela Ackerman

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

One way to get around having to deal with settings is by having a completely fictional world. But even then, most writers are inspired by real places around them and not all genres support this. At Romance University,  shares great tips on how to find useful information to fill in scene details.

~ * ~

How To Vividly Describe a Setting That You’ve Never Visited by Angela Ackerman

by
Woohoo! Angela Ackerman is back in the house with another fabulous post! Do not miss this one!

One of the big decisions writers are faced with is whether to choose a real location for the backdrop of their overall story, or create one of their own imagining. Crafting a world from scratch is a lot of work (requiring a deep understanding of the society, infrastructure, rules, governmental influence, as well as a million other details). But it also avoids a big problem associated with real-world locations: reader bias. This is when the reader’s own emotional ties to a place influence their reading experience.

Imagine your character is living in a neighborhood that a reader grew up in. Even if you carefully researched the setting, perhaps visited it yourself, people and places still change over time. Stores close, schools are torn down. Streets are renamed. Readers will expect the story world to match what they remember, and this isn’t always the case, causing a ripple in their reading experience.

Bias aside, there are many great reasons to place your story in the real world. Readers can slip into the action easier when they understand it takes place in Chicago or Amsterdam because they recognize these areas and can fill in blanks as far as how “big picture” society works.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Link: How I Use Skeleton Outlines to Write Faster

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

I confess to being partial to today’s post because using skeleton outlines is how I like to write. To me it is almost magic how the story unfolds and almost creates itself. So if you are interested check out ‘s post on All Indie Writers.

~ * ~

How I Use Skeleton Outlines to Write Faster

by | Nov 6, 2016

A fellow writer mentioned that client projects sometimes took longer than they’d hoped, and they wanted to learn to write faster. While there are plenty of ways you can increase your writing speed, one tip I gave them was to try using what I call “skeleton outlines.”

I worked through the beginning stages of one while they watched just to show how quick the process could be. And today I’d like to share the resulting example I created so you too can give this technique a try.

This post kicks off a new series where I’ll highlight some of my favorite writing resources and strategies, showing you exactly how I use them, and occasionally sharing my personal tools that I’ve created to use in the day-to-day running of my business.

Let’s take a look at what skeleton outlines are and how they can help you get through writing projects big and small.

What Are Skeleton Outlines?

A skeleton outline is a high-level breakdown of your content. It lets you know what’s coming — what you have to write — without you actually thinking about the meat of that content.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Link: How Novelists Can Work Plot Twists into Their Stories

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Today’s post is all about the plot twist! At Live Write Thrive, C.S. Lakin talks about working good twists into your script.

~ * ~

How Novelists Can Work Plot Twists into Their Stories

by C. S. Lakin

Yummy yummy plot twists
Yummy yummy plot twists

Plot twists are important and powerful elements in a novel. We took a quick look at twists last week, and I explained that you can have these twists in various places in your story, and they can vary in strength.

One novel may have lots of small twists that are basically complications and obstacles the protagonist encounters. But often you’ll have one or two huge twists that wrench the story, and those are terrific when done well.

So what do you need to keep in mind when creating a plot twist?

Twists are all about redirection. Going against expectations.

Think about what readers are expecting and hoping for at a given moment in the story. Then keep twisting the story into new directions that stun and delight them.

If your POV character is seeing indications that her boyfriend is going to propose to her—he’s invited her to a special dinner, says he has something important to tell her, etc., she’s going to get her hopes up. The more you, the author, can imply that’s the boyfriend’s intention, the more impacting the twist will be when he shows up at the restaurant and tells her, sadly, that he has to call it quits. That his long-lost love he thought dead was really alive and well in Chicago, and he just happened to bump into her at the dry cleaners. Or something like that.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Link: Where to Begin Your Book: How to Choose the Best Opening

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Having a strong opening to your story is key in getting people to go beyond the free preview. Award wining author Mary Carroll Moore shares her tips on how to get it right.

~ * ~

Where to Begin Your Book: How to Choose the Best Opening

by Mary Carroll Moore

Vintage picture frameLots of writers struggle with the opening to their books, no matter what genre. I’m working with one client in my retainer coaching program who is writing a very large story–it spans thirty years or more. It’s a memoir, and a lot has happened to her in her long life, so choosing the starting moment is very challenging for her.

We begin by asking what this book is about. “My life,” she answers, and that’s true. But I ask again, “What’s it really about?”

I’m asking her: What’s the focus? What’s the subject of your story, the part you’re going to include in this particular book? Not your entire life. What will you select and why?

Everything you select for your book, whatever genre, sits within a frame. Imagine a photo frame that holds the photograph of your story. Just like any photo, it shows selected segment, a slice of a life. When you find yourself at a loss to imagine this frame–as my client said, “I can’t not put that in, or that either–that has to go in”–you don’t yet have a frame.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Link: NaNoWriMo: But Did I Win?

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

We are almost to the finish line NaNos!  Hopefully you are at your word count or ahead but do not loose heart if you are behind. You can still catch up. One year I had to write 2/3 of my NaNo in the last weekend! I am trying to never do that again!  At Good Ereader, has tips and hints to help.

~ * ~

NaNoWriMo: But Did I Win?

Image courtesy of National Novel Writing Month
Image courtesy of National Novel Writing Month

By

With the excitement of NaNoWriMo firmly grasping authors everywhere, it’s easy to forget that there are newcomers each year who are still a little perplexed by the whole process. The concept of writing the actual 50,000-word novel is already daunting enough, but then the notion of what to do with it when finished is somewhat harder.

The first thing to remember about NaNo is that yes, it’s technically a contest, but you’re only competing against yourself. Well, and the calendar, and possibly your boss if you’re trying to sneak in a few thousand words while on the job. As for “winning” the event, everyone who manages to complete the full scope of the project is declared a winner.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Link: Why It’s Crucial to “Write Ugly”

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Writing “ugly” means giving up the all the rules that we have learned,  to just write. That is  part of the charm of NaNoWriMo for me, as I am so focused on the numbers even though I sometimes still wince at my writing. Writer Unboxed‘s talks about how trying to write pretty can actually be holding you back from authentically good writing. Check it out.

~ * ~

Why It’s Crucial to “Write Ugly”

By

Holding a filthy heart.Here’s a scary thought. When it comes to writing, you may have done everything you’ve been taught to do with utter perfection, and precisely because of that, it turns out you’ve written something that is flat, boring and uninvolving. This all too common phenomenon is something I’m going to be deconstructing, myth by myth, for the next several months in my columns here. I’m beginning this month with the overarching granddaddy of them all – the myth that derails otherwise riveting stories before they’re even created.

It’s this: The myth that beautiful writing is what makes you a real writer, and (an even more damaging belief) that the beautiful writing comes first, before everything else. Beautiful writing is often equated with talent, and without talent, why write at all?

It is heartbreaking how many writers suffer from the deep rooted, often crippling fear of not “writing beautifully” from the very first iteration of the very first sentence on the very first page of the novel. We’ve been trained to be so fearful of penning anything that feels like “ugly writing” that we often end up creating something far worse.

To be very clear, by “writing ugly” I don’t mean writing about hard things, painful things, or any kind of “ugliness” – which is utterly crucial to good stories. Otherwise, you’re basically Hallmark, which is to say, irrelevant, cutesy and dull. Story is about the exact opposite. In fact, story is often about how to dig out from under the sugar coated, stifling straightjacket of the status-quo, which almost always means diving into what polite society has deemed to be ugly, unseemly, and uncomfortable.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Save

Save

Quick Links: Internal Dialogue: The Greatest Tool for Gaining Reader Confidence

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Internal dialogue – the inner thoughts and musings of your entities – is a great way to build trust with your reader and have them connect with your characters.  At the Jane Friedman blog, author Elizabeth Sims helps us to write great internal dialogue. It is a great post, one I am going to bookmark.

~ * ~

Internal Dialogue: The Greatest Tool for Gaining Reader Confidence

Posted on by
Of course, this IS some peoples inner dialogue.
Of course, this IS some peoples inner dialogue.

The following post by author Elizabeth Sims (@ESimsAuthor) is an excerpt from the newly released Crafting Dynamic Dialogue from Writer’s Digest Books.

Not long ago, one of my elderly neighbors lost several thousand dollars to a con artist. A stranger phoned with a convincing sob story that ended in a plea for money. My neighbor actually filled a paper lunch sack with twenty-dollar bills, drove to a nearby grocery store, stashed the bag behind a vegetable bin as directed, and left. Even when a friend explained that it was a trick, my neighbor was serene, believing he had done a service for someone in need.

The best con artists don’t begin by asking for your confidence—they give you theirs first. Here’s my story. I want you, you especially, to hear this. The request for help comes later. There’s the short con—one quick deception and out—and the long con, which takes time and patience to execute. But before either compassion or greed can be exploited, the mark must feel something for the con artist.

When you think about it, what is fiction but one beautiful long con? The reader—the mark—opens a book craving a good story, thirsting to be part of something special. We, as writers, do everything possible to gain the trust of our readers so we can entertain, shock, delight, and amuse them all the way to the end.

And the greatest tool for gaining reader confidence is internal dialogue. Because when a character reveals his thoughts, he’s confiding in the audience. I’m counting on you to understand me—and possibly even help me understand myself. Suddenly readers are in the thick of it; they feel involved and invested. They have some skin in the game.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Links: Veronica Scott presents: Where Does Your Story Actually Begin?

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

It’s all about the backstory. Do you have too much? This hits home for me because right now my NaNoWriMo effort is all backstory. To be fair I am world & character building and if this story every makes it to publishing I plan on massive rewrites that won’t include all the extra information. is completely right in her article on Romance University, it is important to know when your story really starts.

~ * ~

Veronica Scott presents: Where Does Your Story Actually Begin?

July 13, 2016 by Veronica Scott

db-316-winter-121-4447A story starts on page one, right? This post by author Veronica Scott will make you think about where your story really starts…

Welcome back, Veronica!

Where does your story actually begin? “Once upon a time” is a nice intro but maybe even fairy tales include too much backstory.

I’ve been judging various contests for unpublished authors recently and while of course I won’t mention any specifics, the main problem I see is that the author begins with one, two, sometimes even three chapters of material which they feel is necessary to the book. Unfortunately, all too often these chapters are solid info dump backstory or history. If I weren’t judging a contest entry for them, I’d be closing the manuscript and moving on. I’d never even get to the actual story! I see this same comment often in my social media feed from agents and editors, regarding submissions they receive.

(All examples are made up for this post!)

The author runs several risks here. First, while they certainly need to understand the history and events shaping their own world building, the reader is going to become bored fast with the events of the 200 Year War, told year by year, with no immediate connection to a hero or heroine they care about. This technique is even more likely to turn people off early if the author throws in a lot of terms and made-up language details. I’ve had a number of published authors tell me they do write this sort of material, often in early drafts of the novel, because it helps them think through their world building details, but they then delete the material from the final drafts. (I tend to keep scribbly notes on various purple legal pads scattered around the house, rather than write it all out, but that’s me.)

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Links: Tips for Creating Voice in Your Writing

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

A strong story starts with a strong character who has a strong voice.  Or at least that is what I am told. Beth Lewis guest posting at The Writer’s Dig shares tips on how to give your characters clear personalities and voice.

~ * ~

Tips for Creating Voice in Your Writing

By: Beth Lewis |

Full length portrait of a man with megaphone over white backgroundAsk any agent or editor what they look for in a manuscript and inevitably they’ll say they’re looking for voice. A strong voice. A unique voice. An original voice. A realistic voice. But how do you ensure you and your main character possess this? That’s the billion-dollar question, isn’t it?

There is a lot of writing advice out there, some good, some not so good, and I’ll try not to repeat it. I’m only going to talk about what works for me, and I hope it can provide some guidance and help for you as you develop yours. So with that caveat in mind, let’s talk about Voice.

This guest post is by Beth Lewis. Lewis was raised in the wilds of Cornwall and split her childhood between books and the beach. She has traveled extensively throughout the world and has had close encounters with black bears, killer whales, and great white sharks. She has been, at turns, a bank cashier, a fire performer, and a juggler, and she is currently a managing editor at Titan Books in London. The Wolf Road is her first novel. Visit her at bethlewis.co.uk or on Twitter @bethklewis.

There are a couple of definitions it’s useful to keep in mind as we go. There is Author Voice and Character Voice. I can’t tell you much about Author Voice. That’s all you and everyone is different. No two Author Voices are the same. It’s how you speak and think and then how you translate that to the page. All I can really say is trust yourself. Be yourself. Don’t try to write like someone else, it’ll sound fake.

Character Voice on the other hand, that I will talk about. A strong voice is what will make your character feel authentic to readers. Several friends who have read The Wolf Road have given me the same comment – I forgot you, my friend, wrote it. They don’t hear me or my voice in the book at all. Even my mother said the same. This is a good thing. It means the character voice was strong enough to overtake mine.

Here are a few things to consider if you’re looking to write a story with a strong voice.

First person vs Third person

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Link – Falling Behind During NaNoWriMo? 3 Tips to Get You Back on Track

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

How are all you NaNo’s doing out there? I switched things up a bit this year. Normally I write like crazy in the beginning to try and get ahead in case life interferes with my writing, which of course it does. But this year I am sticking close to my daily writing numbers and then moving on to some other work. I actually like this better and have so far been able to keep up. But if you are falling behind, have no fear  at All Indie Writers has some tips to get you back on track!

~ * ~

Falling Behind During NaNoWriMo? 3 Tips to Get You Back on Track

by Jennifer Mattern | Nov 3, 2016

Image courtesy of National Novel Writing Month
Image courtesy of National Novel Writing Month

NaNoWriMo has barely started, and I’m already behind this year. I changed my novel idea at the last minute (I believe around 10:00 p.m. the night before). I still haven’t finished the scene-by-scene outline, though I hope to by tomorrow morning. And it’s now November 3rd and I haven’t even begun drafting my novel yet.

That seems like a cause for concern, right? But I’m not worried. At least not yet.

Every year that I’ve done NaNoWriMo — the popular month-long novel writing challenge for those who might be unfamiliar with it — I’ve accounted for several days off.

That normally involves taking off Sundays and the four days around the Thanksgiving holiday. And in three years, I’ve never had a problem hitting the 50k word target. So things will be OK.

Still, the slow start means I have some time to make up for.

I know exactly how I’m going to do it — the same way I always get back on track when I feel like I’m getting behind during NaNoWriMo. And today I’m going to share some of those “tricks” with you.

3 Ways to Get Back on Track During NaNoWriMo

If your NaNoWriMo word count isn’t quite as high as you’d like it to be, these tips might help you catch up:

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Links: How To Make Multiple Antagonists Shine In Your Story

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Want to really ramp up your story? Make your antagonists multidimensional.  Want to take it to the next level? Have more than one antagonist – check out ‘s post at Stand Out Books for all the details! 

~ * ~

How To Make Multiple Antagonists Shine In Your Story

by

In Kung Fu Hustle, the hero starts off with multiple antagonists
In Kung Fu Hustle, the hero starts off with multiple antagonists

Can multiple antagonists work in a story? The answer depends on the author, but that shouldn’t be surprising when the term is so loosely defined. There are people who’ll tell you that a truly great story shouldn’t have any antagonists at all, and some who’ll tell you that you need at least three to create a narrative worth reading.

What you’ll hear less often is how difficult it can be to write a story with multiple compellingantagonists. That’s a shame, because while it’s a difficult endeavor, it’s one worth pursuing for authors who want to create engaging, realistic conflict in their stories.

Happily, that’s exactly what this article is about – I’ll be touching on how appreciating the antagonist’s role in a story can help you incorporate more than one, how to ensure minor antagonists pack a punch, and how to use differences in ‘kind’ and ‘scale’ to craft multiple antagonists who pose unique threats to the protagonist. Before any of that, though, we have to start by defining a term.

What is an ‘antagonist’?

An antagonist is a character who opposes the protagonist. At first glance, it seems like a synonym for ‘villain’, but the differences between these terms are important. To start with, a villain is wrong or immoral, whereas an antagonist just opposes the protagonist. They’re someone who stands in the way of the protagonist achieving their goals, and that means that if the protagonist of your story is a villain, the antagonist might even be a hero.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Save

Save

Save