Introduction How you style your character’s thoughts can drastically change the way your readers experience the story. Thoughts are how your reader will access the deepest recesses of the story. You can use thoughts to control your story in many ways. For example, you can have your character lie to other characters while letting the …
Welcome! Thank you for coming back for Part Three of my series: Solutions for Writing Middle-Grade Characters. In this post, I’ve added three more solutions, with this week’s focus being on verbal development. Unlike the dialogue-focused article, this week I shift direction more toward how children grow and change over time as they age. I …
Step #1: The idea phase We all have to start out somewhere. Usually, it’s just a small idea floating around in the subconscious. Sometimes you see something that sparks and idea. Maybe it’s an epiphany. But, wherever your inspiration comes from, it tends to start with one thing and then spread out from there. Write …
You type “The End” and click save on your manuscript. You’ve just finished your novel. Maybe it’s even your first ever novel. Maybe you express yourself with a satisfied grin, a whoop-out-loud cheer, or perhaps you heave a sigh of relief. But what comes next? Step #1: Take your novel as far as you can before …
Welcome back for Part Two of my series: Solutions for Writing Middle-Grade Characters for three more helpful tools to get your child character just right. As with the previous post, this article focuses on middle-grade characters, but you can generalize many of these tips to younger kids and teens. To see Solutions #1 through 5, …
Writing amazing, authentic middle-grade characters can take a lot of observation and note taking. If you have real kids in your life to model characters after, that could give you a head start, but whether you do or not, these tips can help you figure out what observations to make and even help you expand …
With first-person point of view, it’s often relatively easy to write a close perspective compared to third person. With third-person-limited point of view, it’s quite possible to do, but third person comes with a few common pitfalls, namely head hopping or accidental shifts into omniscient POV. If done well, third person limited can feel as …
Dialogue seems to trip up a lot of writers. If you are new to writing fiction, there are a few things you’ll want to know about punctuating dialogue or using dialogue tags correctly. This is mainly geared toward fiction, but it can be applied to memoirs or even other types of creative nonfiction. There are …
Omniscient point of view… Talk about a point of view that doesn’t get a lot of love these days. Some people like it; others hate it with a passion. But why such negativity? Omniscient point of view can be a trouble maker. It takes a good understanding of what it is and how to use …
Tip #1: Write your scene first and then find your hook. Start with a conflict. Maybe you’ve seen this piece of advice once before (or many, many times), but what does conflict really mean when it comes to fiction? And do you really need conflict in your opening paragraph? Can’t it wait until later after …
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