Atmosphere: what is it really? It sounds ethereal, hard to describe and even harder to define in your own writing. Atmosphere is another word for mood; it’s the feeling a writer wants their readers to experience, like suspense or foreboding, longing or joy. Individual scenes can have a particular mood, while the overall novel has… Continue reading How to Create Atmosphere in Your Writing
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
In A World… is a series of posts about world building, where our contributors share strategies and tips for creating well-rounded worlds. World building is hard. Fantasy or contemporary, with multiple points of view or one, it’s not an easy task. Just check out the many other posts that are part of the “In A World..”… Continue reading In A World…: World Building in First Person
Let’s talk “quiet scenes.” What are they? How do you utilize them? How do you make sure they’re just as dynamic as scenes with lots of action? Come along as we discuss this roundtable style! Note: This post is done in a roundtable style where members of Writer’s Block Party discuss a topic together. QUESTION… Continue reading Roundtable #13: Quiet Scenes
This post is co-written by Ashley and guest writer, Janella Angeles, author of the forthcoming WHERE DREAMS DESCEND. It’s a truth universally acknowledged that writing is rewriting—but let’s not forget the other undeniable truth that follows: revising is also re-revising. Admittedly, some unicorns have the gift of being smooth, fast revisers and we HATE them (just… Continue reading When Revising is Revising is Revising…
In our “Reading Recs for…” series we’ll recommend reads for certain topics that we run into often. Family dynamics is something most readers can relate to. And complicated family dynamics is often a wonderful tool to understand our characters through their relationships with those closest to them. So, for this “Reading Recs” post we’re giving… Continue reading Reading Recs for Family Dynamics
When deciding who your main character is, the go-to person is usually the heroine of the story. The person who has virtue and good intentions that will carry the reader to a probable happily ever after. However, not all stories are so straightforward, and some of our favorite reads include antiheroines who don’t act the… Continue reading Reading Recs for Anti-Heroines
Hi all! Happy NaNoWriMo 2017! Hope you’ve gotten your writing off to a great start. Since our blog is all about advice, inspiration and community we thought we’d all band together to give some advice from our own personal NaNoWriMo experiences and to cheer everyone on! Meg: I’ve tried NaNoWriMo a few times in the… Continue reading NaNoWriMo advice from WBP
This year, for the first time since graduating from college, I took a substantial amount of time off from writing. I don’t just mean a week or two after finishing a round of revisions. I don’t mean a month where I gently tinkered with side-projects. I mean a full-blown 4 months where I wrote ZERO… Continue reading 5 Tips for Rebuilding a Writing Habit
Everyone loves writing contests! They’re a great way to get feedback and make valuable connections, and they’re totally not stressful at all. Nope, there’s absolutely nothing anxiety-making about putting our work out there to be judged and poked at and rejected. A really super duper fun thing about contests is how they’re extremely public. Everyone… Continue reading #chillwritingtips: In The Game Of Contests, You Win Or You Die…Right?
Writer's Block Party 