A plot structure might be the key to finishing your novel! Here'a a printable cheatsheet to the 7-Point Structure, Save the Cat, The Writer's Journey, The One Page Novel...
A story problem is a simple way to envision your character's plot arc. Choose your main problem, break it down into smaller challenges, and...
Unleash Your Creativity and Skyrocket Your Blog's Potential! Are you struggling to create engaging blog content consistently? Do you find yourself spending hours staring at a blank screen, waiting for inspiration to strike? Say goodbye to writer's block and hello to endless inspiration with our comprehensive collection of blog topic ideas and outlines! Product Features: Expertly Curated Topics: Our eBook is filled with a diverse range of blog topic ideas thoughtfully categorized across various niches. Whether you're blogging about lifestyle, technology, health, or business, we've got you covered. Ready-to-Use Outlines: Each topic comes with a detailed outline to guide your writing process. From introductions to conclusions, our outlines ensure your posts are well-structured and engaging. Customizable Templates: Adapt our outlines to fit your unique voice and style. Our outlines are designed to be flexible, making it easy to inject your personality into every post. Time-Saving Solution: Streamline your content creation process. With our eBook, you spend less time brainstorming and more time producing quality content that resonates with your audience. Boost Engagement: Our targeted topics and structured outlines are designed to captivate your audience. Watch your engagement metrics soar as you consistently publish compelling content. Benefits: Enhance Productivity: Our resource eliminates the guesswork and mental strain of topic selection, allowing you to focus on what you do best – writing. Elevate Your Blog: Stand out in a crowded digital landscape. Our engaging topics and meticulous outlines help elevate your content, making your blog a go-to resource within your niche. Inspire Confidence: No more doubting whether your content will hit the mark. With our well-researched topics and outlines, you'll write with confidence, knowing your posts have a strong foundation. Attract a Loyal Readership: Quality content is key to building and retaining a dedicated audience. Our eBook empowers you to deliver value, fostering loyalty among your readers consistently. Transform your blog into a content powerhouse. Purchase our eBook today and start your journey toward becoming a more prolific, confident, and successful blogger.
The trouble with identifying the Inciting Event is that the term is applied rather wildly to half a dozen different moments in the story. Which is right?
Take a look at what "head-hopping" means, why it creates problematic POVs, and how you can correct it to create a stronger story.
What exactly is White Room Syndrome? The term White Room Syndrome refers to a common writing problem. Most writers will be familiar with White Room Syndrome, even if they haven’t yet heard it…
This is a great story writing activity! This set can be used as a center or for group lessons. The story writing cubes enable students to roll for a character, a setting, and a problem. First, they record their answers on the writing paper. Then the students can use the information to create their own narrative story using the elements provided on the cubes. The writing cubes give beginning writers the foundation they need to imagine and create amazing stories while enhancing their writing skills! This product aligns with the following common core standard: Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to creative a narrative story
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Are your students reluctant writers? Do you have reluctant writers who either write terrible stories, or hate writing altogether? I used to have to pull teeth to get any decent narrative writing out of my kiddos. Whenever I announced we were going to write about something, they’d moan and groan, and (I hate to admit this), I’d sometimes just neglect creative writing altogether. But over the years, I learned some strategies for reluctant writers to get my students’ creative juices flowing and turned my reluctant writers into awesome authors. Now I love to teaching narrative writing, and the students are actually begging to write! I’m going to share 9 tips that have worked for me and I think will work for you too!
The Productivity Pages ONE DAY AT A TIME The Productivity Pages is a collection of 10 elegant worksheets designed to get you excited about tracking your writing goals. CONTENTS Track your writing progress from all angles… WRITING PROJECT MANAGEMENT – these worksheets are for writers with multiple projects on the go: The Story Actualiser The Post Project The Story…
Creative Writer Worksheet – Modalities (PDF) Andreea and I were discussing modalities today, and how useful it is to study them consciously in your own writing and in dialogue. They can help you rephrase problems to yourself, and understand how your friends, family and (almost as importantly) your characters represent certain memories, beliefs or experiences…
I'm honored to have a special blogger friend of mine, Alea Harper, write up a guest post on A Writer's Faith today! -------------------- The plot of a story is probably the most important element of any narrative piece of writing. It is what drives the story. It is the basis of the entire story. For some, coming up with plots is extremely easy, and for some, it is very hard. So let's explore some ways you can come up with original, unpredictable plots. First, there has to be that spark, the idea that you will develop into a plot. For me, these ideas tend to come from Pinterest, music, and sometimes dreams. Other times, it can be the thought of what if these two novels I read combined and was a spy novel? Of course, while developing your plot, you would want it to vary from the two novels you read but it still sparked the idea. After getting the spark of inspiration, it is time to come up with a plot! A plot figures out the problem in the story and different elements. It can also be hard to do. For example, a few months ago, I got an idea for a story I called The Time Division Experiment. I knew that I wanted it to be a story about a person who lived in 4 alternate universe type things. It was really one city divided into four walled sections. Anyways, I really liked the idea but had no idea what the problem should be. And when I tried to plot it out, it came out to be strikingly like "Truth" by Molly Evangeline. Something I like to do to help me with coming up with plots is finding something that I have always wanted a story to have, but haven't found anybody do it. -------------------- Alea Harper is a Christian writer (and hopes to one day be an author). She loves to write (obviously), make movies, serve others, and tell people about Jesus! Almost every day, she is on some adventure; whether its joining the Fellowship and defeating Sauron in “The Lord of the Rings” by J.R.R. Tolkien, running from Emperor Daicen in “Resistance” by Jaye L. Knight, or going on her own adventure that she writes, something exciting is always happening! You can read more about Alea and her writing at her blog: http://www.elvishpensfantasticalwritings.blogspot.com/ (Share this post!)
Chris Baty, founder of the wildly successful literary marathon known as National Novel Writing Month, has completely revised and expanded his definitive handbook for extreme noveling.
Creative Writer Worksheet – Modalities (PDF) Andreea and I were discussing modalities today, and how useful it is to study them consciously in your own writing and in dialogue. They can help you rephrase problems to yourself, and understand how your friends, family and (almost as importantly) your characters represent certain memories, beliefs or experiences…
150+ writing worksheets to help writers with common story, character and worldbuilding problems. Free for educational use.
The most fun part of writing is problem solving. Every day I receive emails from writers bemoaning the fact that they’re stuck, they have “writer’s block“, they’ve lost interest in their current work in progress and have started a new project – on which, if they only knew it, they are about to get just…
Drug addiction and alcoholism are challenging, controversial, and complex to write about, but I personally choose to address both, in my fiction. I do have personal, although not recent, experience…
A fictional story has many parts that require planning. Young writers will love using this planning sheet to plan out their setting, characters, problem, solution, and choose a title.
I used to be an over plotter. A plotter who annoyed herself because she couldn’t do anything until she had planned ten ways to Sunday. The problem with that is, I ended up JUST plotting and not writing. Thank god I came to my senses! Even though I am now edging towards free writing. There […]
Today I’m sharing some amazing tools as part of Verbaleyze’s My Writing Toolkit event, in hopes you might find some new weapons in the battle for strong, compelling description. For those not familiar with VerbalEyze, they are a 501(c)3 nonprofit that serves to foster, promote, and support the development and professional growth of emerging young […]
Hello Pinterest readers! This page has gotten many Pinterest hits over the years, but it begins in mid-conversation, so I thought I would go back now and interject a hello! The chart you’ve come here to see is part of my series How to Structure a Story Around a Large Problem. I later combined that series with others about every aspect of fiction writing to create The Ultimate Story Checklist, which takes your story though each of these steps and many more. Now back to your original post... This rather massive chart (broken up into two halves for easy reading) examines 56 movies and shows how each does or doesn’t take each of the fourteen steps in the story structure I’m proposing. If it helps you to review all the data at once, go ahead, but otherwise, you don’t have to dive in, because for the rest of this series we’ll go through the steps one by one. (And for what it’s worth, I’m in no way implying that these are the 56 best movies out there–in fact, there are some on the list that I’m not that crazy for. I was just looking for a representative sample of movies that were about the solving a large problem, and were, for the most part, well-liked, well-written, and financially successful.) The Steps: Step 1: The Longstanding Personal Problem Step 2: The Public Humiliation Step 3: The Intimidating Opportunity Step 4: Hesitation Step 5: The Hero Commits Step 6: Committing Creates Unexpected Conflict Step 7: The Hero Tries to Solve the Problem the Easy Way Step 8: The Promise of the Premise is Fulfilled Step 9: The Midpoint Disaster Step 10: The Hero Tries the Hard Way Step 11: The Spiritual Crisis Step 12: Proactive Pursuit of The True Goal Step 13: The Timeline is Unexpectedly Moved Up Step 14: Climax and Epilogue And Here Are the Charts: Tomorrow: Step 1!
Are you a homeschooling mom? Tricia Goyer shares 6 activities you can do with your writers' club
You don’t feel driven to write. You tag the experience as writer’s block. And you’d be right. The search to overcome the writer’s block curse begins. You hate it. Annoying isn’t it? Check this out:…
Overwriting is a common problem for new writers. Even experienced writers can fall victim to the issue. It’s something, as a reader, that drives me nuts. It’s also something I’m guilty of needing f…
Enjoy this FREE Roll-a-Story Writing Activity from MsJordanReads to kick-start your back-to-school writing fun! Students will love creating story starters using the mix-and-match story elements from the chart! (All you nice is a dice!) Download this free resource and for a fun, back-to-school activity! :) Happy Teaching!
Writers Write is a resource for writers. We’ve put together a post on ways to stay gender neutral and solve problems with pronouns.
Creative Writing Worksheet – Thoughts (PDF) Some characters’ minds barely make a peep – I always wonder whether their inner voice can really be so still. Other characters spend the entire story chattering away in italics – solving problems, questioning motives, or just reminiscing. What about your character? What do their thoughts sound like? I…
Have you ever wondered if you have what it takes to be a writer, if you want it badly enough, or if you’re truly meant to be one? Below follows a list of 10 signs that you are meant to be a writer. Check out how many of them apply to you.
Doing creative work requires some semblance of confidence, whether to help get you started, or to keep you going. Without confidence, you can run into problems like writer's block, imposter syndrome, and overall fear and anxiety about your work... When you feel confident in your own work, other peop
Light Mode Scrivener Theme for macOS Infuse your writing sessions with a touch of softness and charm using this light, sweet pink Scrivener theme. With its gentle pink hues, this theme creates a cozy and inviting writing environment that feels warm and uplifting. Perfect for writers who want a calm yet inspiring workspace, the sweet pink palette adds a subtle sense of joy to every keystroke, making your creative process both soothing and fun. This theme is compatible with Scrivener 3 for macOS. It won't work with Scrivener on Windows. Right after purchasing, you will be able to download a .zip file that contains the theme and a PDF with instructions. Note: Colors may slightly differ due to computer and monitor settings. Please contact me if you encounter any problems.
Have your students think of story elements as ingredients for a delicious narrative! Young writers will consider setting, characters, the problem, and the solution with this fun pre-writing organizer!
This page indexes over 150 free writing worksheets. Members of my Coterie can download each years’ worksheets in one master PDF. Click here to join and access the Coterie library. Story Worksheets Story Problem Story Loops Spark to Story Character Log Character Introductions Protagonist vs. Antagonist The Home World Pep Talks Celebrations Characters Change Character Arc…
What exactly is White Room Syndrome? The term White Room Syndrome refers to a common writing problem. Most writers will be familiar with White Room Syndrome, even if they haven’t yet heard it…