By Loretta Eidson While reading Battlefield of the Mind by Joyce Meyer, it occurred to me the irony of how well that title describes the multitude of thoughts in a writer’s mind. We enter a mental battlefield every time we sit down to write. While our thoughts press against a pliable wall of ideas, we must filter through them before …
Paralysis of Perfection
By Karen H. Richardson It happens to the experienced and the inexperienced among us. It happens when we least expect it or have time for it. We desire to put words on a page to tell a story, share an emotion, or express some great truth. We have a list of topics and an outline. We want each syllable to …
Bringing Characters to Life
By Henry McLaughlin A story without people is not a story. I’m not sure what it is but it’s not a story. You can have a great plot and beautiful settings, but if your characters are not alive, you just have words on a page. There are numerous tools available to help us create characters. Meyer-Briggs, Gary Chapman’s Five Love …
A Seemingly Innocent Question
By Suzanne Kuhn, SuzyQ The holiday season is almost here, and this is a good time to use relevant subjects on your social media. However, please be aware that you may open a can of worms. Don’t be afraid of it; just proceed with caution. I like to ask questions that get my friends and followers thinking and revealing bits …
Not All Characters Are Created Equal
By Winnie Griggs The stories you write undoubtedly have casts of varying numbers, descriptions and personalities. And while every character in your manuscript works together to tell your story, they each perform a different function depending on the roles you assign them. In fiction there are four tiers of characters. These are: • Primary Characters • Secondary Characters • Bit …
Smooth Scene Breaks
by Lynn Hobbs Descriptions of a scene and section break are simple. A section break can be another characters point of view or closure of a particular scene. A scene break within the same scene will show days or hours later in the story; or the character’s advance to a new location. A challenge to include them in a flowing …
The Doldrums: How to Put More Wind in Your Writer’s Sails
By Bonnie Doran What are the Doldrums? Here are the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary definitions: 1. a spell of listlessness or despondency 2. a part of the ocean near the equator abounding in calms, squalls, and light shifting winds 3. a state of period of inactivity, stagnation, or slump Do you ever feel that your writing is in the Doldrums? You …
Whatever Is Good
By Ramona Richards “Employ whatever God has entrusted you with, in doing good, all possible good, in every possible kind and degree.” -John Wesley This quotation from John Wesley may have been inspired by 1 Peter 4:10, which instructs us in a similar fashion: “And serve each other according to the gift each person has received, as good managers of …
Journaling Our Journeys
By Shirley Gould In a valiant quest to describe human emotions in our prose, we as writers scan lists of nouns and adjectives in an attempt to make them real to our readers. It is a tedious and time consuming process. Gleaning from my personal journey, emotions experienced in our lives evoke the most vivid descriptions possible…if we journal them …
How to Get Better With Every Book
By Lindsay Harrel As someone who suffers from perfectionism, I want everything I do to be the picture of…well, perfection. That includes the books I write. But the reality is – and I’m sure all of you know this – writing books is just plain hard. It takes time to learn the best ways to develop a character, to take …