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Feb 28, 2020

How to Write a Killer First Line

By Yanina Wallis.

Let’s face it, we’ve all been there. We’ve all spent much longer than we care to admit anguishing over whether the first line of our novel is exciting enough. Reading it, deleting it, rewriting it, reading it, deleting it, rinse, repeat, to the point where you never think you’ll have that killer first line that your opening deserves.
The reality is, your first line doesn’t need to carry the weight of your entire novel. Take a look at any book from your collection and read the first line. Is it exciting? Sure, there are some fantastic exceptions, but the majority of books don’t open on a t-shirt worthy, instant classic.

Feb 26, 2020

Outline Your Memoir in One Day

By Imara Moses

When I finally decided to sit down and write my memoir, the idea of writing a book had been floating around in my head for a while.  Because I had been mulling over what I wanted my book to be about for some time, it only took one afternoon to write my outline. 
I have a scientific writing background, so I knew I would not be able to write a good book without first having a rough sketch of what I wanted to share.  The outline is critical to writing a book because it prevents it from being a series of random thoughts scrawled all over paper without any direction. 

Feb 24, 2020

Scene Setting Using Deep POV

By DJ Cracovia.

One of the toughest lessons to learn as a fiction writer is how to think like a writer. No, no, let’s rephrase that a little bit. What I meant to say is – the hardest lesson to learn, as a fiction writer is to think like our characters.

In recent years, more and more popular fictions are written in first person or third person close. Both POVs, aka Point of Views, lend themselves to deeper character-centered stories with less and less of the intrusive narrator’s voice. Today’s readers want to experience a story as it unfolds, and through the eyes of the main characters. Readers no longer want to be told a story, nor do they want to be told what to think by an omniscient storyteller.