Three Questions to Get to the Heart of Your Story
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy The story is why readers picked up your book. Writing is such a strange thing. As writers, we get these characters and stories in our heads and put them down on paper....
View ArticleDecisions, Decisions: Creating Character Choices That Matter
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_HardyA plot is just the series of choices a character makes in a story. Making a decision is one of the most important things your characters will ever do. Not only does it...
View ArticleThe Problem With Flash Forwards as an Opening Scene
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_HardyIf you have to flash forward to hook a reader, you’re not starting in the right place.I admit, flash forwards are a big pet peeve of mine. I find them awkward and...
View ArticleDid You Choose the Best Words to Describe Your Setting?
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_HardyYour reader doesn’t know what you’re picturing when you write a scene. Make sure they see what you see.Setting is a vital component of a novel, but it's one of the more...
View Article3 Places Told Prose Likes to Hide
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy Told prose can steal the oompf from your story and make readers want to skim. As a science fiction and fantasy writer, I was guilty of a lot of telling in my early work....
View ArticleIn the Beginning: Which Type of Opening Works Best in a Novel?
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_HardyOpening lines are your novel's first impression on a reader. As long as it's a good impression, how you get there doesn't matter. The opening line of your novel is...
View ArticleWhen Stuck in a Scene, Look Around
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy Sometimes the answer to making a scene work is inside the scene itself. I’ve been struggling with a major turning point chapter revision the past week, and one scene was...
View ArticleThe Faceless Villain: What to do When Your Protagonist Is the "Bad Guy"
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy Not every story has a villain at its center—sometimes the problem is the protagonist. For a lot of writers, the hardest-to-write conflict is the Person vs. Self conflict....
View ArticleTurning Good Writing into Great Writing
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy The first words you write aren’t always the right words to use. Tuesday, I spent at least a half hour writing one line—and it wasn’t an opening line. I was working on a...
View ArticleDescription Tip: Make “Sense” of Your Characters
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy You have five great tools for writing better descriptions, so why not use them all? I’ll be honest—description is my least favorite thing to write. I always have to do a...
View ArticleTelling Yourself to Show: How to Identify Flat Scenes
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy We don't always choose the right scenes to dramatize in a story. I wrote a scene for my third novel, Darkfall, where my characters were sitting at a table talking about...
View ArticleAre Your Characters Living in the Moment or Watching it Pass By?
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy Put yourself in a scene before you put your characters there. Years ago, there was a bit of a scare in the Hardy household. Our oldest cat took a tumble and hurt his hind...
View ArticleDescription Is More than Just “What it Looks Like”
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy Choosing the right details to describe can be the difference between a scene that soars and one that falls flat. I have a confession. I can’t stand description. I don’t...
View ArticleOne the Road: Take Advantage of Your Reader’s Expectations
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_HardyI'm over at Writers in the Storm today with Take Advantage of Your Reader’s Expectations. Here's a sneak peek:To strengthen your story, look at each scene as a reader...
View ArticleKeeping Your Distance: How Narrative Distance Works in Your Novel
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_HardyThe narrative distance in a novel has more impact on it than you might think. Especially when it comes to point of view. Over the years, I've critiqued a lot of...
View ArticleTighten Your Novel with a Preposition Patrol
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy A tighter novel helps keeps readers engaged in the story.When I first started writing, my novels were long. Like, seriously long. This isn’t unusual for a new writer, and...
View ArticleHow to Write Description When You Hate Writing Description
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy Every novel needs description, even when you don't wanna write it.I dislike writing description. Which is funny since I write science fiction and fantasy—two genres known...
View ArticleAvoiding Awkward (or Unnecessary) Internal Questions
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy Too many internal questions can come across like the author telling the reader what they ought to be wondering about.Internalization is a powerful tool for showing who a...
View Article3 “Easy” Steps for Cutting Words from Your Manuscript
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy Deleting words from your novel is easier than you think.Before I dive in, I'm guest posting at Writers in the Storm this week, with A Handy Trick for Brainstorming Your...
View ArticleWhat “Burnt” Can Teach Us About Conflict and Stakes
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_HardyThe whole point of creating conflict and stakes is to use them. My husband and I are big fans of both cooking shows and movies about restaurants, so we were excited to see...
View ArticleGet What's in Your Head onto the Page
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_HardyIt’s the author’s job to bring a story to life for readers.Sometimes we envision a story so clearly it plays out in our heads like a movie. We know exactly how the...
View Article3 Mistakes to Avoid When Creating Stakes in Your Story
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_HardyStakes are critical to any story, because without stakes, why should readers care about what's going on? Storytelling problems often appear in one of three areas—lack of...
View ArticleIs Your Plot Going Somewhere Readers Will Follow?
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy Just because you have a plot, doesn’t mean you have a story. The first novel I ever wrote was all about the plot. This happened, and then that happened, and I explained...
View Article5 Common Problems With Beginnings
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_HardyIf your beginning isn't working, no one will get to the ending. A novel’s beginning is under a lot of pressure. It has to introduce the protagonist and characters, setup...
View ArticleDo You Feel It? Writing With Emotional Layers
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_HardyJust like your plot has layers, consider the emotional layers of your story. Emotions are like a complex soup, where every sip brings a new experience and you never know...
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