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 Jill Williamson | Dec 21, 2022 | Brainstorming, Creativity, Fantasy, Setting, World Building, Writing Tools
If you missed the first two posts in this series, you can check them out here: Geography for Worldbuilding, Part OneGeography for World-Building, Part Two: Climate, Weather, and Biomes When I drew my very first fantasy map, I knew it needed water. My world was a...
by Jill Williamson | Oct 19, 2022 | Brainstorming, Creativity, Fantasy, Setting, Speculative Fiction, World Building, Writing Tools
Before I get into today’s post, I want to let you know that we’re having a sale on the Go Teen Writers books to gear up for National Novel Writing Month. Both Write Your Novel and Edit Your Novel are on sale! You can get them for $2.99 each on Kindle or...
by Shannon Dittemore | Apr 13, 2022 | Author Life, Productivity, Time Management, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Tools
Stephanie, Jill, and I are back at our respective desks this week after six days together at a writing retreat on Puget Sound. It was a lovely time away, and I thought it I’d give you a snapshot of our week as I share thoughts on why retreats like this are so...
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 Stephanie Morrill | Feb 2, 2022 | Characters, Compelling Character Series, First Drafts, Writing, Writing Tools
In the first post of this series, I talked about how I get to know my characters as I write, not through a bunch of exercises from before I write the book. Last week, I talked about four filters you can use to understand and manipulate your characters’...
