Writing as Craft

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The 2020 Beau Monde Writers’ Retreat will be Virtual!

You may have seen me mention the Beau Monde before and wondered what it is… The Beau Monde is an online writing organization with members all over the world that welcomes all writers of Regency-set romances, regardless of stage of publication and publication path of the writers, and level of sexuality, range of plot elements,…

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What’s Your Self-Editing Process?

I’m trying to develop/discover my self-editing process and this week in my accountability group How I Write series was asked, “Do you have an editing process? If so, what?” This is one of the things that I’m honestly struggling with as a writer. I do not currently have what I would term a self-editing “process”…

Character Development & Archetypes

This week for our How I Write series, my accountability group asked, “How do you develop your characters? Do you have a favourite kind/archetype?” We covered part of the idea of character development before and my general method is in the post, Building Characters where I likened it to my daughter’s cosplay outfits. I skimmed…

Are You BFFs With Your Heroines? Could You Be?

This week for our How I Write series, my accountability group asked, “Could you be best friends with any of the heroines you’ve written. Is she/Are they someone you would hang out with? Why or why not?” I don’t know about BFFs, but my heroines are definitely the kind of people I’d hang out with….

Hard vs Easy Parts of Writing

This week for our How I Write series, my accountability group asked, “Dialogue, narrative, exposition, or description? What are your favorite parts of writing and why? Your least favorite and why? What do you do to make your least favorite parts more attractive or easier?” Deceptively Easy Parts of Writing When I am able to…

Plotting via Spreadsheets – Don’t Be Trapped in the Box

Last week, we talked about How We’d Spend A Day With One of Our Characters, but this week’s entry in our How I Write series, takes a closer look at our planning process. So, since we’re all writers, we’re focusing on plotting, which inevitably leads to the question: Plotter vs Pantser or some weird mix?…

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Research

This week my accountability group is blogging about how we go about doing research for our books. Last week’s post on developing characters is also part of our How I Write series. Market Research: I read voraciously in my chosen genre of Regency set Historical Romances. I read other genres too, but these are my…

Building Character

This week my accountability group is blogging about how we flesh out/develop a fiction character for our stories. Last week’s post on our bookshelves and influential authors is also part of our How I Write series. In order to answer the question about HOW, I think I need to share what character depth & complexity…

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Structure

Just like we need a bit of structure in our lives in order to thrive and stretch our selves to reach our goals, our writing needs a bit of structure to it. This helps keep the story coherent and cohesive and helps it resonate with the reader. I’m sure there are experimental constructions out there…