For a strong story pace, we need to ensure every element has purpose. How can we do that? How can we know if a scene or sentence is pointless?

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Story Elements: Give Them Purpose

Unless we’re only ever going to write just one book, we need to improve our ability to develop an idea into a story. That means we need to learn how to brainstorm in a productive way.

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How to Use Focused Brainstorming to Develop Our Plot — Guest: Janice Hardy

One of the most common pieces of writing advice is to Show, Don’t Tell. In many cases, that’s good advice, but as with most advice, that “rule” is imperfect and incomplete.

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Showing vs. Telling: How Do We Choose?

We’ve been talking about antagonists lately, and how some writers minimize the conflict in their stories, even though “good fiction is the path of greatest resistance.” In a perfect bit of serendipity, a guest post by Janice Hardy today addresses the most common myth about conflict.

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Conflict: Why It Isn’t Just about Fighting — Guest: Janice Hardy

My series about Indie Publishing Paths at Fiction University has highlighted some of the choices we have to make as self-published authors, and now it’s time to summarize everything we’ve learned in a step-by-step plan.

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Self Publishing? Where Should We Start?

My series about Indie Publishing Paths at Fiction University has highlighted some of the choices we have to make as self-published authors, and now it’s time to pull all that information together and develop our “master plan.”

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Self Publishing? Use Your Goals to Develop a Master Plan

My series about Indie Publishing Paths at Fiction University has highlighted some of the choices we have to make as self-published authors, including what our newsletter strategy should be. Can our goals help us decide?

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Self Publishing? Match Your Plans to Your Goals — Part Three

My series about Indie Publishing Paths at Fiction University has highlighted some of the choices we have to make as self-published authors, including how to keep readers. Can our goals help us decide?

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Self Publishing? Match Your Plans to Your Goals — Part Two

A common problem—even in traditionally published books—is Missing Motivations. A character’s goal can feel irrelevant if readers don’t understand why they have that goal. Or a character might seem stupid or unlikable if readers don’t know why they’re acting a certain way.

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The Most Important Question in Storytelling: “Why?”