To hear some authors talk, we’d think there are strict plotters and strict pantsers and nothing in between, but there’s really no end to the mix of approaches we can use in our drafting.

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Pantser vs. Plotter vs. Something in Between

Writing prompts can help with inspiration or creativity, or distract us from the writing we’re “supposed to” do. How can we make them more helpful to us?

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Writing Prompts: Helpful? Or a Waste of Time? — Guest: Savannah Cordova

The processes that worked on our last story might not work on our next one, but we want to think about the pros and cons before experimenting.

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The Pros and Cons of Experimenting

It’s time for another post as a Resident Writing Coach over at Writers Helping Writers, and this time we’re talking about how to stitch together the pieces of our story after a big revision.

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Making a Big Revision? Stitching Our Story’s Rips Together

Plotters might find any kind of pantsing hard to understand, but even pantsers can struggle with pantsing our characters’ development, as that process comes with a different set of problems from developing our plots.

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How Do Pantsers Develop Characters?

I’ve been helping Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi at Writers Helping Writers keep a big secret: The Emotion Thesaurus Second Edition! Angela and Becca have added new responses, new entries, and new writing tips.

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Need Help Writing Emotions? The Emotion Thesaurus Second Edition Is Here!

With the New Year, I like the idea of fresh starts, so I’m sharing a tip from Twitter on how we can draft our story in a different font than usual to help us see everything with fresh eyes.

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Happy New Year! Get a Fresh Start

Suffering from writer’s block? Lisa Bell shares the brain science behind what causes writer’s block and gives us “brain hacks” we can use to beat it.

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What Is Writers Block (Really) and How Can We Beat It? — Guest: Lisa Bell

When we’re drafting or editing our story, we usually have to keep track characters, secrets, plots, research, and story bible details. But for complex stories, we might want to create a Writer Crime Wall.

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Complex Story? Use a Crime Wall — Guest: Kitty The Retro-Writer