DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills Bestselling stories explode from powerful emotions that push a character into authentic cause and effect. The process is the backbone of fiction. A character is deeply motivated and commits skills, time, energy, and knowledge to pursue something tangible or intangible. The something is valued, meaning sacrifices are expected. The reader will feel cheated if the character is …
Seven Components Required to Create a Compelling Character
by Rachel Hauck @RachelHauck This August I’ve been writing full time for twenty years. I quit my job—cutting our household income by two-thirds—with one little $2,500 contract and a big deposit of dreams. While other contracts followed, my books didn’t fly off the shelf, win awards, or create buzz at my publisher. In many ways, I had a wrong idea …
The Business Side of Writing: Backing Up Your Claim of Being a Writer
By Barbara M. Britton @BarbaraMBritton I love to create people with distinct personalities and unique skills and write about them to produce a story. I call myself a professional writer, but to the IRS I might be a hobbyist or a dreamer. How do I prove to government agents that I run a business? Here are a few steps to …
Save Your Editorial Cuts and Deleted Scenes
by Glynn Young @gyoung9751 I had several pieces of a novel-in-progress that I’d set aside from the manuscript. Two fell outside the overall timeline; I’d cut several others because, while they were interesting, detracted from the main flow of the story. One was most of an entire scene; one involved a character than I’d cut; and one simply had way …
Where Dreams Are Made Possible
by Kelly Anne Liberto @kellyliberto Are you pressed down and exhausted from opposition? Tired from a burning passion that will not leave you but you seem to make no progress no matter how hard you work? You know the scripture burning in your spirit calling you to follow him. Yet, you see no fruit or reward after years of laboring …
Discipleship Through Writing
by Dwight David Croy Presently as a co-pastor of a church with a congregation of many teachers and writers, my mind turns to discipleship in writing. As a Christian writer consideration of the second part of the great commission should be pondered. Matthew 28:19: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the …
Suffer the Children
by M.D. House @real_housemd Almost everyone has a tender spot in their heart for children. That is because we are sons and daughters of God; his natural tenderness toward the innocent, the vulnerable, and the teachable was passed on to us. We can learn to ignore it, mute it, or shove it aside, and unfortunately some do. I love children, …
What Turns Me Off as a Reader
by Jenny Powell MD I’ve been reading since I was four years old. My older sister taught me whilst playing school (I had always thought that since my mother was an elementary school teacher, she had taught us both. I assumed wrong.). I remember reading my first chapter book in third grade, the age at which they tested our reading …
Singing the Song of Freedom
by Christine Sunderland Today, July 9, is my birthday, nine months after my bones took flesh, searched out and known by the Lord of Hosts. Bursting into the world with my first breaths, five days after America’s Independence Day in 1947 (in Fresno, California), I left behind the comfortable creche of my mother’s womb. My mother, a graduate of Biblical …
Shhh!
by Angela Hunt Hello, ACFW! I hope you’re enjoying your summer and planning for the conference coming up in September. It’s going to be a great time! Anna Quindlen once wrote an insightful column for Newsweek. She wrote about solitude and explained that though she loves her family, she also loves time alone: “I like solitude. I can spend days happily …