As a mostly pantser who desperately wanted to be a plotter, outlines have long been my nemesis. I was so envious of people who would just know a whole story upfront without going through the trouble of writing the whole thing wrong multiple times. But after nearly 5 years of warring with outlines, I finally… Continue reading Outlines Are Lighthouses, Not Destinations
In the grand tradition of Writer’s Block Party, this week’s post is about a topic that I’m in the midst of trying to master for myself. And what better way to think through a writing concept than to write about it? We have talked a lot about plotting before–what is plot, how we structure it,… Continue reading Writing Subplots
Beginnings are hard because there are so many elements to introduce. You have to consider character dynamics, point of view, pacing, world building, voice, narrative flow–and it’s incredibly hard to figure out how to balance all those aspects in a cohesive, clear, and engaging manner. While there’s no easy formula to crafting the perfect beginning,… Continue reading 3 Questions To Ask Yourself For A Stronger First Chapter
For this week’s post, I wanted to talk a little bit about everyone’s favorite feel-good show–Queer Eye. Specifically, I wanted to dig into why Queer Eye is so successful, and what that can teach us about the art of storytelling. If you haven’t seen the show, the basic premise is this: every episode, the “Fab… Continue reading What Queer Eye Teaches Us About Storytelling
We did it, we survived 2020! So, let’s try to start 2021 with some positivity, new connections, and writing! The best way to be a good writer is to…well it’s to write. Second best way (that we know of) is to make new connections/writer friends! We all met up through various Critique Partner (CP) match-up posts like the one… Continue reading Critique Partner Match Up 2021!
Sometimes a book will sell on proposal. This means the book sells to a publisher before it is fully written. This often happens in very specific instances, the most common are packaged books (IP) or an author that is already established. Most newer authors will first experience this with their “option book” for their original… Continue reading Book Proposals (for fiction)
I have already written a post about how to write dynamic character arcs, but what that post doesn’t address is how to construct these arcs over the course of a series. Usually when we think about character arcs, we think about them within the confines of a single book–the characters starts out with an inner… Continue reading Character Arcs Over Series
We (Kat and Katy) love middles. But not everyone does. So we got together to write about why we love them and what we think makes them shine. As well as some advice for how to keep your middles interesting! What is the middle of a story? It should be easy to identify the middle… Continue reading Why we love writing “the middle” of stories
We’ve written about pacing before and specifically pacing with multiple POV books, but today we wanted to talk about something a little different though it goes in hand with pacing: tension. This post is cowritten with Ashley Burdin. What is tension anyway? There’s an interview between Francois Truffaut and Alfred Hitchcock that we love where… Continue reading Building Tension in Stories
Hey, we’re back with another WBP survey, the first of which was on average chapter lengths, which you can check out: here. We want to do more of these, so definitely let us know in the comments if there is a question on craft or publishing that you’d like the writers of WBP to answer!… Continue reading WBP Survey: How do you approach notes after first receiving them from CPs, agents, and/or editors?
