Tips and Tricks
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Writing without characters is like riding a bike without wheels, you won’t get too far. Sure, there are pieces out there that have limited characters, but they at least have one aspect that has to do with the development of a personality or skills. Look at Disney/Pixar’s Wall-E. There is no dialogue for the first…
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Welcome to the next installment of Tuesday How To! This month I will be telling you all about characters and how to find and develop them. Let’s have some fun!
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Writing, like every other form of art, strives to make people feel something. This is usually accomplished by making the work feel real, using real emotions and situations that force the reader or the viewer or the participant to feel something. Sometimes, this means including things that hurt us, or make us feel vulnerable, dirty,…
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We all get ideas, sometimes they are planned through brainstorming, or sometimes they come to us out of the blue. Sometimes finding ideas is the easy part, and sometimes it’s not so easy. You can get ideas from anywhere and anything, but sometimes the ideas you get aren’t enough. So this week, let’s talk about…
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Last week, we talked about how to find ideas and how ideas are everywhere. This week we’re going to take it one step further and decide which ideas are good and which ones are bad. I don’t like the term “bad” since there are no bad ideas unless they are not your own. If you…
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The first portion of Tuesday How To is the first step of the writing process: Ideas. Without ideas, there is no direction in your writing, no way to continue and no way to know if you’re going in the right direction. So let’s stsrt to talk about ideas. Let me start by saying this: Ideas…
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New plans for the blog. Details inside!
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Writing is not easy. Anyone who has had to write anything will tell you that. It doesn’t matter if it’s an essay, or a short story, or a novel, or even an email. Getting the words and images from your head to the page is sometimes the hardest thing writers do
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We all have dreams, whether we are writers, astronauts, or billionaires, or even all three. Whether your dreams are huge, something your work toward for years, or small, something you want to do tomorrow, you need to follow them. You need to reach for them and do whatever you need to do to achieve them.…
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A lot of the time, we, as writers, cringe at some of our past works. We look back at the simple plot lines, the horrible dialogue, and the stupidest names and just want to chuck it in the nearest garbage can and kill it with fire. I have been there many times, first drafts and…
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Writing takes a toll on every aspect of our lives. Whether you call yourself a writer, or a poet, or a reporter, or anything to do with writing, you will start feeling the toll it takes on your body, physically, emotionally, psychologically.
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Writing is hard. A lot of readers just think words on a page means instant book, but we writers know that is far from the truth. Writing takes editing, editing takes time and rewrites. Words rarely end up on the page and stay where they are in the first draft. Sometimes, the whole process of…
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Ideas are everywhere, but sometimes they seem weird or outlandish, sometimes overdone, or exactly like another writer’s idea. If you’re anything like me, that can be a frightening idea, that could keep you up at night, and make you doubt every word you put on the page. Sure, there are a lot of ideas out…
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Being a writer could mean anything. It’s a quite large umbrella term, just like artist or scientist. Like any other label, what we use as writers, or artists, or scientists defines us. Writer could mean anything from articles to webblogging and anything inbetween. There are many tools that we as writers use, whether it be…
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As humans, we feel the urge to learn. We feel the urge to expand and learn new things, attempt new things. There are several quotes about knowledge and ignorance, and progress. As writers, we cannot stay in the same place forever, we must advance and grow and learn.
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Whether you are new to writing, or have been writing for decades, you have some knowledge. You know what you do, who you are, and what you write. Just as no two people can write the exact same novel, there are no two people that have the same exact knowledge base. Why not use that…
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Rarely ever do writers write like actors portraying writers in movies. In movies, there is just one draft, no hardship, no long nights editing and crying because you can’t remember how to spell an easy word, no agonizing wait times. Just shiny finished product. Movies make writing seem like the easiest thing in the world,…
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Every year, writers, both old and new, get together to participate in Camp NaNoWriMo. Camp NaNoWriMo takes place several months out of the year and allows anyone to write a novel. April used to be for Scriptfrenzy, but now it’s all about the camp life, cabins, writing buddies, and writing a novel in 30 short…
