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Find Your Writing Voice in 2021
If you aim to be something you are not, you will always fail. Aim to be you. Aim to look and act and think like you. Aim to be the truest version of you. Embrace that you-ness. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
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2020, Fiction, How To Write A Novel: Step by Step, The Writing Life, Writing prompts, Writing quotes
HOW TO WRITE A NOVEL: The Beginning
The WRITER’S OATH I promise solemnly: 1. to write as often and as much as I can, 2. to respect my writing self and 3. to nurture the writing of others. I accept these responsibilities and shall honour them always. Gail Carson Levine – Writing Magic Starting a novel is a daunting task. If you have been following the How To Write a Novel series, you’ll know that we have done some preliminary work with ideas and characters, and outlines. But at some point, you need to begin actually crafting this work that will be at least a couple of hundred pages long. So, let’s get started! At the top…
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HOW TO WRITE A NOVEL: Step by Step
Getting Your Character Out of the Room “I do believe that characters in novels belong to their writers and their readers pretty equally. I’ve learned a lot of things about the characters I write from people who read about them. Readers expand them in ways I don’t think of and take them to places I can’t go.“ Anne Brashares How do I get my character out of the room?” This is the dilema that caught me completely off-guard and threw me into a bout of writer’s block when I first began to write my novel. The situation is not nearly as scary if you have a few scenes already crafted, but still,…
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Compelling Characters
You take people, you put them on a journey, you give them a peril, you find out who they really are. Joss Whedon Characters are why people love stories, and it is why they will read your novel. Yes, some readers prefer fast paced, action-packed adventures to the more internal struggles of a character driven story. But if the main character does not capture your interest, you will not care what happens to her. If readers don’t care, they lose interest. They stop reading, Even if your characters are cats, as is the case in Erin Hunter’s Warrior series, they have personalities, strengths, backgrounds and feelings. Good characters will make…
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CHARACTERS
HOW TO WRITE A NOVEL: STEP BY STEP I write Young Adult fiction, so my main character will be around High School age. If you are writing an adult book, you won’t need to worry about the ages of your characters. Who Are These People? Perhaps a better question is, “How Do You Find These People?” The first, most obvious answer is, YOU. I often find myself thinking about who I was in high school. What did I think about? What was important to me? I also draw on other experiences in my memory to evoke emotions, even though the situations are totally different. For example, in my current contemporary…