WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®

Theme is an important element that quietly works in the background of strong stories. Pulled deliberately or subconsciously from the author’s individual worldview, it acts as an anchoring thread that connects the other st...

If there’s one thing authors know, it’s the value of help. We all wear hats–so many hats!–to match the roles of this job: writer, researcher, marketer, strategist, business manager, accountant, promoter, networker, website guru, problem solver, and more. It’s…a lot. Too much for one person, or even two, as Becca and I can attest.

As often happens in life, chan...

Writers pay me to edit their work. You might assume that I will therefore attempt to talk you into all the reasons why you need to hire me. Actually, the opposite is true. Getting valuable, free feedback from readers is an important step in the journey toward publication. After that, a professional edit will have its place. Here are all the ways you can get feed...

Character tropes get a bad rap. These familiar character types show up in stories everywhere, making them very recognizable. This makes some writers worry that using them will create clichés and stereotypes. And that can definitely happen if we lean too heavily on a trope when building characters; they become people the reader has seen a million times. Boring.

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Most writers who consider themselves as either pantsers or plotters tend to believe they can only be one thing: This is just how I’m wired. Once a pantser, always a pantser. Ditto for plotters. Finding a drafting strategy that works for you is great—until it isn’t.

Usually there comes a time in your writing career when you embark on a novel that threat...