Hi, friends! Today I have an article on the Writer’s Digest website called “Forced Proximity: 50 Reasons for Your Characters To Be Stuck Together.” I’ve blogged before about how helpful it is to a romance novel plot to give your couple an actual reason to see each other a lot, and as I explain in the article, forced proximity can
Category: Writing Matters
I’m sharing a very basic character development worksheet today because I think it’s one great way to get to know your characters better! There are some very complicated worksheets out there, but even a simple one like this can lead you to better insights and even inspire plot points. I’m also sharing a trick for making a character lovable
What is the definition of a fiction genre? It’s simply a category of literature. It determines, among other things, what shelf it sits on in a bookstore or a library. For readers, it’s good to be aware of different fiction genres. Sometimes we can widen our horizons and read a book in a genre we don’t often explore. For writers,
Hi friends! This isn’t Halloween playlist per se, but I’ve gotten a couple of requests for it and I thought the week before Halloween would be the perfect time to post it. It’s a good writing playlist for horror, suspense, and mystery novels and screenplays, and it’s also good, intense music to listen to when writing a book with a
Hi, friends! At work, we are reading lots of manuscripts after an open submission period. That’s got me thinking about some of the common issues plaguing romance manuscripts. I often get emails asking, “Why is my novel getting rejected?” I want to help, because I’m a writer myself. But sometimes a combination of reasons led to the rejection, and unfortunately,
One of the big questions writers run into is, “What should I name my character?” There are good reasons to take character naming seriously. If an agent or editor is reading a query letter, or if someone in a bookstore is reading the back cover of a book, the characters’ names are one of the first things they learn about
Writers, I know how it is. You need to write a hopeful beginning, an upbeat scene where two friends meet, an adorable date, a triumphant moment, or a happy ending. And you need to get into the right mood. Here’s an uplifting playlist to help you feel happy and put that happiness down on the page. It has an overall