One of the original drafts of Not Your Villain totaled about 110,000 words! In making a better book, this story had to be streamlined. One of the challenging parts about editing (and saddest) is cutting scenes, especially scenes I loved to write. I had so much extra story that I thought it would be fun to share some of these with you.
You know the feeling, you’re staring at your draft, stuck on a scene, not knowing how to move forward, or even if there is a way. This section of your outline says “stuff?? things/!?!” in lieu of actual plotty bits, and you’re just like, “Thanks, past me.” Your characters linger on the page, unsure of where to go to next but your brain is fried and you’re just… stuck.
Here are five writing exercises to help get those creative juices flowing again.
Read More “Five Quickwrites To Get You Out Of A Writing Rut”
So you’ve gotten to that sweet spot where you’re inspired, the creative juices are flowing, and you’re writing, writing, writing.. whether you’re in the middle of a writing sprint or doing NanoWriMo or just trying to finish this draft, one of the key things about writing is not to edit when you’re in the middle of getting your first thoughts down. So how do you focus your creative energy? A few ideas to keep from getting distracted by editing, research, and more.
Read More “Go, Go, Go: Tips for Keeping Up With The Writing Flow”
When introducing characters in your novel, a great way to avoid that unsightly infodump or a huge wall of description in the text is to sprinkle in details as we meet your characters. A neat way to focus on this is to engage the reader’s senses…
Not Your Sidekick takes flight in the year 2123, a hundred years after a major solar flare catalyzes for not just superpowers but also a series of major disasters which drastically changed the world. Yesterday The Gay YA hosted NYS on their monthly book club discussion, and the question was asked about how sexuality is seen in the NYS world, how it’s not entirely accepted, but not too much phobia either.
CB Lee 