by Jill Williamson | Feb 22, 2023 | Scenes and Scene Structure, Story Structure, Writing
In my early days of writing, I spent some time studying scene structure. I was trying to understand pacing, and it just wasn’t clicking for me. I eventually gave up trying to “put myself in a box,” and ever since, I’ve written my scenes...
by Jill Williamson | Feb 16, 2022 | Go Teen Writers Book Club, Learning from Other Authors, Plot, Scenes and Scene Structure, Story Structure, The Craft of Writing, Writing Tools
It’s no secret that I love Blake Snyder and his Save the Cat books. I own them all. I’ve read and dogeared them all. I’ve even taught workshops on his process at writing conferences! And I’ve blogged about it here, often. If you search for...
by Jill Williamson | Sep 23, 2020 | Brainstorming, First Drafts, Scenes and Scene Structure, Story Structure, Writing
An outline is a general plan. For a novel, that can be as simple or as in-depth as you want. Some writers outline every single scene of their novel before they write. Some only outline a little bit. Some write a synopsis as an overview of the story they’re planning to...
by Stephanie Morrill | Sep 21, 2020 | Beginning Writer's Guide To Finishing A Novel, Editing, Scenes and Scene Structure
Let’s imagine that your manuscript as a garden. When you wrote your book, you put each seed in the soil where you imagine it should go. When finished, you took a break came back to a blooming garden (along with some weeds that somehow wound up in there!) The...
by Jill Williamson | Apr 15, 2020 | Book Club Posts, Editing, First Drafts, Getting Feedback On Your Writing, Go Teen Writers Book Club, Learning from Other Authors, Scenes and Scene Structure, Story Structure, The Craft of Writing
This is our final blog post for the Go Teen Writers Book Club. Chapters 24 and 25 of Story Trumps Structure by Steven James were both so short, I decided to combine them into one post. If you didn’t yet read Chapter 25, go read it right now, then come back to the...
by Jill Williamson | Feb 12, 2020 | Book Club Posts, Characters, Go Teen Writers Book Club, Scenes and Scene Structure
Before we get into today’s chapter, I want to thank you all for your kindness and support last week. Never have I received so much encouragement all at once, and it meant a lot! Grad school has been hard for me in several ways. First, there’s a small, nagging voice...
