Craft
Writing Historicals: Immerse Yourself in the Details
Tuesday Teachings from the archives: I’ve been going back through the wonderful content on Writer…Interrupted and wanted to share the relevant teaching from past posts! Hope you enjoy this new Tuesday feature!- Gina Three of my first four contracted books involve a step back in time to the days of World War Two. I may have…
Freelancing to Support My Fiction Habit
Before I became a novelist, I was a journalist. I wrote for my high school and college newspapers, rising in the ranks to news editor. After college I began my first novel, got married, had a baby and stopped writing. Then had three more babies. Unfortunately, I didn’t know I could write and raise children.…
Writing Historicals: Immerse Yourself in the Time Period
Tuesday Teachings from the archives: I’ve been going back through the wonderful content on Writer…Interrupted and wanted to share the relevant teaching from past posts! Hope you enjoy this new Tuesday feature!- Gina Three of my first four contracted books involve a step back in time to the days of World War Two. I may have…
Top Ten List for Writers
Patience. In abundance. Pressed down and overflowing. Everything takes time. And lots more time than you could imagine. So if you write, you’ll shake the doors of heaven begging for patience. What ifs. A writer takes a “what if” and crafts a story around it. Without a “what if” question, there would be no books,…
The Evolution of Distractions (and Wasted Time)
My distractions have evolved many times over the course of my writing journey. At first they were obvious: toddlers. I had two kids under the age of two and clearly could not write while either were awake. This offered a crisply defined line between writing and everything else. Naptimes provided neatly packaged blocks of time…
Writing Big and Trimming the Fat
When I first began writing fiction, I was taught by one of my brilliant teachers to write BIG. (Which actually means big in word count.) He told us to plug in the research, to write lengthy descriptions, and just let the words flow. So that’s what I usually do. When I finish, I step back and…
Pacing in a Story
Tuesday Teachings from the archives: I’ve been going back through the wonderful content on Writer…Interrupted and wanted to share the relevant teaching from past posts! Hope you enjoy this new Tuesday feature!- Gina Where do you start a story? You have a few pages (for some a few paragraphs) to catch an editor or reader’s attention.…
A few last tips for cutting a synopsis
Tip#8 to cut a synopsis—cut modifiers Adjectives and adverbs are usually the easiest to cull from a synopsis. Sometimes you don’t even need to change the noun or verb. Other times, a stronger noun or verb is needed. She determines to win without interference from her meddling friends. vs. She determines to win without interference…
Fiction Friday: More tips for cutting a synopsis
Tip#4 to cut a synopsis—relevance Cut absolutely anything that does not have direct impact on the main storyline. Be ruthless. Don’t leave things in because they pertain to a subplot. Don’t go off for too long (more than a few sentences) on a red herring. Don’t include character backstory that doesn’t absolutely need to be…
Writing Your Novel Idea
Tuesday Teachings from the archives: I’ve been going back through the wonderful content on Writer…Interrupted and wanted to share the relevant teaching from past posts! Hope you enjoy this new Tuesday feature! This month’s feature: From Idea to The End I wrote fiction unsuccessfully for many years. What boosted me to publication was a class…