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Writing for Kids: What You Need to Know
When people think about writing for the children’s market they generally envision picture books. While picture books are a large segment of the children’s market, there are other categories as well. Don’t make…
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Character Story Goal
Every novel must have a story goal and that goal should be clearly stated for the reader. Let me say that again: every novel must have a story goal. In my novel, Heaven…
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Character Design
Character design is an integral part of the writing process. Designing the characters that will populate our story worlds is complicated. It takes time, effort, and lots of brain power to create characters…
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Write from Experience
For those of you who aren’t aware, I’m a mom to 10 kids (yes, 10, and yes, I delivered all of them). People ask me if I always wanted a large family…
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Character Design Ideas
People ask me where I find the inspiration for my characters. Some ask if my characters are based on real people. Most of my characters are compilations of lots of people. Character design…
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Hero’s Journey Steps
In anticipation of writing my next novel, I’ve been reading and studying the hero’s journey. It’s been interesting reading. I have The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, but I’m not sure I’m…
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Why Do Most Writers Fail?
Many people want to write a book. In fact, if you ask a group of people if anyone wants to write a book, the majority will raise their hands and say they do.…
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Tips on Writing a Novel for The First Time
Many people make the mistake of thinking that writing a novel is easy and doesn’t take any talent or skills. I’d say writing a novel takes more skills than talent, but that’s a…
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Point of View in Writing Fiction
You have a story inside you that you want to share. It’s just aching to get out, But how? How do you share this story with readers? Point of view, or POV, can…
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Writing Dialogue That Matters to Your Story
When writing fiction, it’s important to understand the techniques of writing effective and realistic dialogue. Dialogue in fiction is quite different from speech in real life. Mimicking true conversation won’t be effective in…
