WRITEONCON
- Jodi Meadows on How to Write a Synopsis: love her idea for a verbal diarrhea pre-drafting synopsis!
- Taran Hudson on Pacing: her Chapter Sandwich is a good trick for making sure there's lots of tension and excitement
- Kendra Levin on Your Own Hero's Journey: how to balance your writing with everything else in life
- Carrie Ryan on Revision: great tip about starting with the big picture before looking at detail
- Martha Mihalik on Building Believable Romance: love her point that romance doesn't have to be stated directly
- [Vlog] Lisa Schroeder on Novel Beginnings: great point about being intentional with your starting point
- [Vlog] Lindsey Leavitt on The Debut Year: omg she's so adorable!
PLOTTING
- Marina Cohen wrote for Let the Words Flow about how thinking = plotting. I feel so much better about all the time I spend daydreaming!
- Jennifer Hubbard talks about why middles are marvelous. I think openings and endings are incredibly difficult for me, too!
- Patricia C. Wrede says you need to know where you are in order to determine if you can get to where your destination. Great analogy for plotting and knowing your story.
CHARACTERIZATION
- Juliette Wade muses on developing antagonists through story events.
- Lori M. Lee has a great post about the inequality of switching gender roles in YA fiction. Go read it!
SETTING/WORLDBUILDING
- Cam at The Empty Pen wrote intriguing posts on the personality of setting and how it affects characterization. Those posts made me more excited to think about setting — definitely one of my weaknesses.
- N. K. Jemisin talks about colonialism in worldbuilding and how that affects culture and society in her books.
In other news, I've realized that I should've spent more time plotting and planning before diving into Camp NaNoWriMo. I make a terrible pantser. But participating forced me to think about my project more and I've made a lot of progress in figuring things out (if not actual word count), so I'm glad I signed up!
I keep thinking up potential plot events and scenes, but because I hate how everything feels like a muddle in my head, I bought a ton of note cards and sticky notes in order to storyboard the plot. I'm hoping that organization and getting the structure down first will provide a smoother writing experience down the road. I'm excited to see how it goes! I'll blog more about whether the note card method worked for me once I've gotten a chance to try it out.
Oh, and here's an interesting post from Slate about how to write faster. Are you a Beethovian or Mozartian drafter? I bet you can guess which one I am!
