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Have you ever read a story with a setting so rich, it felt almost as if the setting was a character itself?
Some authors seem to have an innate talent for creating vivid settings. The streets feel alive, the woods seem to sing with wildlife and native flora and fauna. In fantasy settings, the readers find themselves immersed in the magical world, wholly able to believe in the strange… read more
Action and reaction in fiction writing are used to describe the difference between plot versus motivation or the correlation between events and consequences.
A character chooses to do something. This in an action. They may choose to go to the coffee shop, buy a dog, send a letter to the person they’re crushing on, or even throw a cup of coffee at… read more
Conveying emotions in your work can be difficult, but it’s an important part of the craft. Offering insight into your characters’ feelings helps your reader develop empathy for them. When a character experiences an event, you want your readers to feel something, too. How you choose to convey your characters' emotional responses can influence the way your readers feel about your characters and… read more
Letting the reader into your character’s mind creates a connection. A character’s words might not always tell the whole story; a person’s thoughts reveal who they really are. If you want your readers to be invested in your characters, show your characters' complexity by revealing the inner workings of their weird and wonderful brains.
Thoughts, like dialogue, should serve a purpose. In… read more
Finding time to write as a busy parent can be challenging. In a previous blog post, we offered tips to help you write your novel no matter how old your children are.
Writing can feel daunting when doing it all alone or without much support. Where do you start? How do you work out a plot problem? How do you find inspiration? Fortunately, there… read more
People always ask writers where we get our ideas. Our answers are varied—conversations, song lyrics, witnessing an interaction between strangers on a bus, the particular shape and color of a piece of fresh fruit in a loved one’s hands, an old TV show barely remembered.
Life is full of sources of inspiration and tapping into that inspiration can take your writing to a new level. Those… read more
Queer is a huge spectrum and the umbrella gets larger as we humans find language for various aspects of gender identity, orientation, and ways of existing outside of the heteronormative majority. According to Statistics Canada, there are approximately 1 million folks in Canada who identify as LGBTQ+. That’s a lot of people who are looking to read about people like them. But reaching this… read more
Parents, does this sound familiar?
You’ve had a novel swirling around in your head for some time; characters form while you're driving in the car. Plot twists develop in the shower. Worlds and settings come to life while you prepare dinner. You sit down at your computer desk, or open your laptop and prepare to write.
Just as you type out a few words, your child appears beside… read more
This post is part two in a series.
In The Structure of Flash Fiction (part 1), we discussed how you can use flash fiction to help hone your story and covered the first part of flash fiction structure.
Here's what comes next:
Section 3:
The middle part of the story contains a few (maybe 4-6) sentences that show the attempted conflict resolution has failed.
… read more