by Jill Williamson | Jan 31, 2024 | Creativity, Elements of Fiction, Fantasy, Guest Posts, Learning from Other Authors, Plot, Speculative Fiction, Story Ideas, Story Structure, Writing
Ellen McGinty is an author and editor of Young Adult fantasy and historical fiction. She lives in the Tokyo metropolis with her husband, three boys, and a hypoallergenic cat. When not writing or editing, you can find her exploring the wilds of Japan with an abundance...
by Jill Williamson | Dec 20, 2023 | Brainstorming, First Drafts, Story Ideas, Writing
As a novelist, short stories have always been challenging for me. I have the tendency to overcomplicate things, and short stories need to be simple. Last year I wrote a short fiction story for a magazine. Thankfully, my editor gave me some advice about how to...
by Stephanie Morrill | Feb 1, 2023 | Brainstorming, Creativity, Practicing, Story Ideas, Writing Exercise, Writing Tools
If you’re a writer, it’s inevitable that you have little sparks of inspiration written down and tucked away in various places. A Google Doc where you dump story ideas. A character idea that you wrote on a napkin. A Post-it where you documented a...
by Stephanie Morrill | Sep 1, 2021 | Brainstorming, Discovery Writing, First Drafts, Story Ideas
Story ideas come to us in all different ways. Sometimes our spark of a story idea is a character facing a dilemma or making a hard choice. Other times, we might have an idea for a world we want to explore. This is especially common with fantasy or science fiction...
by Stephanie Morrill | Oct 7, 2020 | Story Ideas
I’ve been a writer for as long as I can remember, and I’ve tried many, many methods for capturing my story ideas. Index cards, 3-ring binders, OneNote, a Word Doc (which was documented here), file folders, bullet journals, sticky notes, Google Keep, etc. I...
by Jill Williamson | Sep 24, 2020 | Brainstorming, Discovery Writing, First Drafts, Go Teen Writers Books, Story Beginnings, Story Endings, Story Ideas, Story Middles, The Craft of Writing, Writing Life
Today is the day! We are revealing the book cover for Go Teen Writers: Write Your Novel. This is a book that Stephanie, Shannon, and I wrote for beginning writers. We know it’s hard to finish a first draft. We know it’s hard to stay motivated to write ONE...
