How to Liven Up Dull Scenes I think we’ve all had the experience during drafting where you get to a scene that you just don’t. want. to write. You know the scene needs to be written to move your plot along, but you just can’t seem to muster the enthusiasm to write it. (And granted,… Continue reading How to Liven Up Boring Scenes
Story time! Last winter, I got the green light to write a sequel/companion novel to REBEL SEOUL. One problem: I had no plot! I had characters & concept, with several scenes that I was super excited to write, but I was missing all those elements pivotal to plot structure: an inciting incident, stakes/motivation, subplots, escalating… Continue reading Writing a Synopsis Before Drafting
A while ago I was talking to a friend about pop culture pet peeves–those things that really bother us when we’re watching or reading something. And when she asked me what mine was, my answer was immediate: poison. Specifically when someone eats or drinks a poisonous item and collapses 3 seconds later. And today I’m… Continue reading The Physiology of Poison
Cowritten by Akshaya Raman One of the toughest things about writing multiple POVs is figuring out how to structure your book. If you’re adhering to basic story structure, then you know you need a few key plot elements — an inciting incident, a dark moment, a climax. But with multiple POVs, each character’s storyline has… Continue reading Pacing with Multiple POVs
Recently I had a conversation with a fellow writer (hi Meg!) about how we’d both gone back and forth on whether our books worked better as YA or adult, and it got me thinking about how exactly those kinds of things are determined. There are lots of books on adult shelves I could easily see… Continue reading YA or Adult: Finding the Emotional Core of Your Book
There is a common refrain out there, in every corner of the internet, on panels and interviews galore, where authors talk about how hard it is to write their second published book. It’s so common, in fact, that it has a variety of names–the sophomore slump, second book syndrome, the tenth circle of hell, etc… Continue reading Why is it So Hard to Write a Second Published Book? Reflections on the Sophomore Slump
Timelines in a book are hard enough to keep track of, but when you start throwing in additional POVs, they can quickly become giant tangled messes of woe. Maybe your first POV’s chapter take place in the afternoon, but the next POV needs to take place at midnight, but oh no–the next one has to… Continue reading Timelines with Multiple POVs
