Regency romance, romantic mysteries, & writing tips too.
Do you enjoy finding names for your characters when you’re writing fiction? Many authors don’t. Moreover, naming your characters has pitfalls. In one writers’ group meeting, an author told us about her cousin, who also writes fiction. They were chatting about character names. The cousin admitted that she’d never bothered checking her names with Google … Read more
“Who’s doing NaNoWriMo this year?” (A question at our writers’ group meeting.) It’s that time of year again. November and NaNoWriMo loom large. Will you participate? BTW: no matter when you’re reading this, you can use these tips to improve your fiction… Whether you’re joining in or not, if you’re an author, you worry about … Read more
At a recent writers’ group meeting, we discussed how to write fiction that readers love and remember. The discussion started when one author said: “Last week I caught up on my reading. I read four (genre) novels. After I finished them, I struggled to remember the characters. And the plots.” (I won’t mention which genre … Read more
Let’s look at some useful writing tips for 2020, courtesy of our local writers’ group. (Original post from December 2017; edited and updated) Writing tips: start with a process Ouch. I used to have a writing process, but that vanished this year, due to workplace chaos. I wrote about an easy writing process here, and … Read more
When you’re writing fiction, you’re writing about characters in conflict, and the more believable you can make your novel’s conflicts, the better. Conflicts can be major (battlefields in a war), or minor: “you promised you’d buy milk on your way home!” Want to write a page-turner? Do that by ensuring that the conflicts between your … Read more
You’re a new author, and you’re writing a novel. It occurs to you that the novel might be more successful as a series. The benefit of a series is that each book sells the next. Writing a novel? Begin a series, rather than a standalone Start planning for your series now, before you finish the … Read more