Straight talk from the sisters about blood, sweat and ink
Every April, the WriteOnSisters take part in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge, but we felt it was important to support our pals over at Camp NaNoWriMo too. For this year’s A to Z Challenge, everyday (except Sundays) we will be blasting our way through the alphabet by sharing our best writing tips. These …
Continue reading “Last Minute Tips for Camp NaNoWriMo”
If we were having coffee I would welcome you into my living room and offer you something yummy. How about some homemade churros? Not too much cinnamon, I hope. I’ll be dipping mine in coffee, but I’ve made some Mexican cocoa for the kids, so you can have that. Or tea if you prefer. After …
Continue reading “Coffee Share: Brains, Bricks and Bugs”
Most writers understand the value of creating contrast in their stories and characters. We’ve all been told to write our characters with dissimilar looks, and to give our antagonist and protagonist different types of skills and flaws. But when a writer takes any story differences and sets them up in parallel for the purpose of …
Continue reading “3 Ways to Use Juxtaposition in Your Writing”
As some of you might know, the book I’m currently writing is a frame story – a story within another story. For this project, I wanted two parallel plotlines, but with one important change. In my project the two stories never converge, not even at the climax as a traditional duel plotline will. This is …
Continue reading “Tips for Writing Non-Converging Parallel Plotlines”
If we were having coffee, I would meet you at a café. Unfortunately, I have a sick kid at home. Nothing serious, but I wouldn’t want to expose you to the sniffles when you have projects under deadline. You dive right into a slab of chocolate decadence that would normally take both of us to …
Continue reading “Coffee Share: A Giddy Fangirl Version”
Character mapping is a technique I use on every project I write. These simple flow charts keep track of all the interconnected relationships in my books and help me build more complexity into those relationships. I love including lots of secondary characters. Out of personal necessity, I developed a quick method for making character maps. …
Continue reading “6 Easy Steps to Great Character Mapping”
If we were having coffee, I would tell you with a gleam in my eye, that this week marked the end of an era! I have won the Battle of the Blackberries. Yes, it was a bitter war, fraught with injury: the cut on my nose, the thorns under my nails, the blisters on my …
Continue reading “If We Were Having Coffee: The Battle Recap”
Every writer wants to create prose packed with energy and vitality. They know dull, lifeless writing disappoints the reader. Tired sentences are often the cornerstone of bad prose. They disrupt the flow and bore the reader. Take these tests and find out if your sentences pass, or if you’re writing tired sentences. Same Sentence Starts: …
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Today Write On Sisters is taking part in 1000 Voices Speak for Compassion, a movement intended to flood the internet with 1000 blog posts on this important topic. You can learn more about the movement on the founder’s website: http://yvonnespence.com/. And onTwitter at the hashtag #1000speak. Compassion. How can we expect a single word to sum …
Continue reading “Compassion: The Writer’s Gift”
One of the most important scenes in any book is the midpoint reversal. A reversal is an event that creates a fresh complication for the protagonist. It increases the stakes and sends the story off in a new direction. The reversal is the backbone of the classic three-act structure. If you don’t know what the …
Continue reading “4 Tips for Writing Reversals”