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Three Questions to Get to the Heart of Your Story
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy The story is why readers picked up your book. Writing is such a strange thing. As writers, we get these characters and stories in our heads and put them down on paper....
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Decisions, Decisions: Creating Character Choices That Matter
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_HardyA plot is just the series of choices a character makes in a story. Making a decision is one of the most important things your characters will ever do. Not only does it...
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The Problem With Flash Forwards as an Opening Scene
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_HardyIf you have to flash forward to hook a reader, you’re not starting in the right place.I admit, flash forwards are a big pet peeve of mine. I find them awkward and...
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Did You Choose the Best Words to Describe Your Setting?
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_HardyYour reader doesn’t know what you’re picturing when you write a scene. Make sure they see what you see.Setting is a vital component of a novel, but it's one of the more...
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3 Places Told Prose Likes to Hide
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy Told prose can steal the oompf from your story and make readers want to skim. As a science fiction and fantasy writer, I was guilty of a lot of telling in my early work....
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In the Beginning: Which Type of Opening Works Best in a Novel?
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_HardyOpening lines are your novel's first impression on a reader. As long as it's a good impression, how you get there doesn't matter. The opening line of your novel is...
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When Stuck in a Scene, Look Around
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy Sometimes the answer to making a scene work is inside the scene itself. I’ve been struggling with a major turning point chapter revision the past week, and one scene was...
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The Faceless Villain: What to do When Your Protagonist Is the "Bad Guy"
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy Not every story has a villain at its center—sometimes the problem is the protagonist. For a lot of writers, the hardest-to-write conflict is the Person vs. Self conflict....
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Turning Good Writing into Great Writing
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy The first words you write aren’t always the right words to use. Tuesday, I spent at least a half hour writing one line—and it wasn’t an opening line. I was working on a...
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Description Tip: Make “Sense” of Your Characters
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy You have five great tools for writing better descriptions, so why not use them all? I’ll be honest—description is my least favorite thing to write. I always have to do a...
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Telling Yourself to Show: How to Identify Flat Scenes
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy We don't always choose the right scenes to dramatize in a story. I wrote a scene for my third novel, Darkfall, where my characters were sitting at a table talking about...
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Are Your Characters Living in the Moment or Watching it Pass By?
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy Put yourself in a scene before you put your characters there. Years ago, there was a bit of a scare in the Hardy household. Our oldest cat took a tumble and hurt his hind...
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Description Is More than Just “What it Looks Like”
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy Choosing the right details to describe can be the difference between a scene that soars and one that falls flat. I have a confession. I can’t stand description. I don’t...
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One the Road: Take Advantage of Your Reader’s Expectations
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_HardyI'm over at Writers in the Storm today with Take Advantage of Your Reader’s Expectations. Here's a sneak peek:To strengthen your story, look at each scene as a reader...
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Keeping Your Distance: How Narrative Distance Works in Your Novel
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_HardyThe narrative distance in a novel has more impact on it than you might think. Especially when it comes to point of view. Over the years, I've critiqued a lot of...
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Tighten Your Novel with a Preposition Patrol
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy A tighter novel helps keeps readers engaged in the story.When I first started writing, my novels were long. Like, seriously long. This isn’t unusual for a new writer, and...
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How to Write Description When You Hate Writing Description
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy Every novel needs description, even when you don't wanna write it.I dislike writing description. Which is funny since I write science fiction and fantasy—two genres known...
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Avoiding Awkward (or Unnecessary) Internal Questions
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy Too many internal questions can come across like the author telling the reader what they ought to be wondering about.Internalization is a powerful tool for showing who a...
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3 “Easy” Steps for Cutting Words from Your Manuscript
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy Deleting words from your novel is easier than you think.Before I dive in, I'm guest posting at Writers in the Storm this week, with A Handy Trick for Brainstorming Your...
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What “Burnt” Can Teach Us About Conflict and Stakes
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_HardyThe whole point of creating conflict and stakes is to use them. My husband and I are big fans of both cooking shows and movies about restaurants, so we were excited to see...
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Get What's in Your Head onto the Page
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_HardyIt’s the author’s job to bring a story to life for readers.Sometimes we envision a story so clearly it plays out in our heads like a movie. We know exactly how the...
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3 Mistakes to Avoid When Creating Stakes in Your Story
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_HardyStakes are critical to any story, because without stakes, why should readers care about what's going on? Storytelling problems often appear in one of three areas—lack of...
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Is Your Plot Going Somewhere Readers Will Follow?
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy Just because you have a plot, doesn’t mean you have a story. The first novel I ever wrote was all about the plot. This happened, and then that happened, and I explained...
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5 Common Problems With Beginnings
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_HardyIf your beginning isn't working, no one will get to the ending. A novel’s beginning is under a lot of pressure. It has to introduce the protagonist and characters, setup...
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Do You Feel It? Writing With Emotional Layers
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_HardyJust like your plot has layers, consider the emotional layers of your story. Emotions are like a complex soup, where every sip brings a new experience and you never know...
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