What’s a B-Story? And Why That Love Triangle Doesn’t Cut It

Before I explain what a B-Story is and why it’s crucial, here’s a list of what it is not: Comic relief that is inconsequential to the main story. A side plot that has nothing to do with your hero. A tacked-on love story to appease those who say YA needs a love triangle. These are …
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Story Edit Using The “Save The Cat” Basic Beats

Whatever your writing process, whether you outline or dive straight into prose, there’s one step we all must do – story edit. There are innumerable things to edit in a manuscript, but let’s start with the bones of the story. After all, adding metaphors and sensory descriptions won’t matter if the story is weak. So …
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Creating Names for Historical Fiction

What’s in a name? Shakespeare asked the question and we as fiction writers know the answer, the name is everything! Well maybe not everything, but critical, as names set the tone and define how readers view characters. Do we expect P. G. Wodehouse’s character Bertie Wooster to be an esteemed mathematician? Most assuredly, not. As …
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Walking the Tightrope: Embodying yesteryear, while embracing today’s reader

When you write historical fiction, you face great scrutiny. The tiniest mistake, or an over abundance of details, and you will generate comments. Angry heated comments. In a sense, you are always walking a tightrope between crafting authentic sounding prose and creating intelligible prose. One wrong foot and everything comes crashing down. If you want …
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A Novel is a Hamburger (aka The Difference Between TV Scripts and Novels)

When I left TV to write a novel, I really believed I’d be done in a year. Why not? I already knew how to put together a story. Yet as an episodic freelance screenwriter, I’d only been working with the “meat” of a story, not the whole hamburger. That’s right, I’m going all food analogy …
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