How to Create Scene Endings that Hook Readers

We’ve been talking about the difference types of transitions we might create between scenes and plot events. Today, we’re focusing on the types of sentences that will strengthen our scene endings (and thus our scenes).

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How to Create Scene Endings that Hook Readers

Cause and Effect: Understanding Story Flow

In the real world, the cause of something happens before the effect. But in writing, we can put words into any order we want, which might leave the reader confused. If they have to reverse events in their head, they’re probably no longer immersed in our story. Not good.

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Cause and Effect: Understanding Story Flow

Fix 4 Common Writing Problems with “The Emotion Thesaurus”

A couple of weeks ago, Becca Puglisi, one of the co-authors of the fantastic Thesaurus books, shared her tips for using the new The Positive Trait Thesaurus and The Negative Trait Thesaurus books. Her advice can help us develop our characters at all stages of planning, drafting, and editing. But the comments of that post pointed

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Fix 4 Common Writing Problems with “The Emotion Thesaurus”

Actions and Reactions: The End-All-Be-All of Storytelling

A story’s narrative is made up of a chain of actions (motivation/cause) and reactions (response/effect). The cause-and-effect chain, whether at the scale of story acts or sentences, creates our narrative drive: Is the story leading somewhere?

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Actions and Reactions: The End-All-Be-All of Storytelling

Does Every Scene Need a Goal?

I love when I make my readers think.  Even better is when they turn around and make me think even deeper about an issue.  *smile* Yesterday, K.J. Pugh blogged about my last post (where I talked about cliffhangers and hooks) and brought up the issue of sequels I briefly mentioned.  No, we’re not talking about book

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Does Every Scene Need a Goal?