Writing Lessons from Autumn Leaves

I love all the seasons equally, each for their own special qualities. Spring delivers fresh air, sunshine, and soft ground for planting new flowers and reintroduces me to my favorite plants after a long, dark winter. Summer’s sunrises give me the perfect backdrop for morning walks with my dog and the full-blown beauty of nature. [...]

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Just because I’ve been away from the blog…

…doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing. (so get ready for a round-about post! You know it )
The fine line between summer and the start of a new school year seems barely visible from either side. On lazy summer mornings, I can hardly recall the constant chatter in the hallways and the regulation of 8 [...]

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8/18 WIP Tip: How Clean is Clean?

I’ll never forget one of the first romance fiction pieces I wrote. For some unknown reason, my character liked to clean her house while she did her thinking. I personally liked her character, loved the hero.
I finished the story and, as luck would have it, was enrolled in a fiction writing class my freshman [...]

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8/13 WIP Tip: Setting as Character

If you’re not using your story setting(s) as character, you’re missing a crucial element to bring readers into your world.
Here’s what to do: Pick one setting of your story–one setting of one scene. When I’ve done this, I’ve always started with a smaller setting, not the larger one that envelops most of your story world. [...]

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8/12 WIP Tip: Free Day!

Imagine a gas leak at your character’s place of business closes work for an entire day. Or a day-long meeting has been cancelled and your character has a day to spend doing nothing.
Whatever the reason and circumstance, your character has 24 hours all to herself. No assignments pending, no boss to please. What does [...]

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8/11 WIP Tip: Childhood Want

Think back to your childhood. What’s the one thing you wanted most but your parents wouldn’t let you have?
In my case, my first thought was a pony, but really…I only wanted that because my friend Cathy had one. No, what I really wanted was Michael Jackson’s Thriller cassette (stop laughing!). Desperately. The main reason [...]

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8/10 WIP Tip: Work.

Ahhh…summer. Its warm mornings and decadent garden vegetables are slipping through my fingers as we speak. I lament the loss of summer every year because longer nights mean less sunlight and September forces me from writing back into the classroom.
After a vacation from work, one of at least a week or more, how does your [...]

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8/9 WIP Tip: Religion

This is a huge topic in developing character (religion plays a large role in how we perceive our universe and our actions in it), so this WIP Tip may only scratch the surface.
We’ve all used those character lists/questionnaires at some point, even if we haven’t written down responses, to get deeper into our characters. There’s [...]

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8/8 WIP Tip: Weekends

I often assume everyone loves the weekends as much as I do. Loverboy even wrote a song about it in the 80s (ahhhh….80s music…but I digress)….
But assumption is only clouded perception. How does your character view the weekend? If it’s a simple release of the work week and play time, how does she approach that [...]

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8/7 WIP Tip: Festering Words

In each of our lives, someone has said something negative along the way to us–a backhanded comment, a flippant observation, a downright rude statement about us–that has stuck with us.
The same has happened with your character, you just may not know it yet. Maybe it was about their job, their looks, their family, a hobby [...]

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