Tomorrow is the anniversary of a decision I made to help writers think differently about what they’re writing, to give them one more perspective in a vast sea of other advice- and perspective-givers, but you’ve shown that it wasn’t a waste of time. You’ve stuck with me, and let me share with you what I know; you’ve let me encourage you, and you’ve let me in on a very special part of yourself: your stories and your dreams. Thank you! To celebrate the milestone, here’s your annual round up of what we’ve accomplished this year.
Two-Year Blogaversary masterpost Three-Year Blogaversary masterpost
We added post series on Creature Companions, Dialogue, Relationships, Space Building, and we’ve picked up the Magic Building series again to talk about practitioner tropes. Night of Asking and the Night of Musing events continued strong, and you all indulged me with the Title Stories meme. The gmail for one-on-one consultations still doles out advice to those in need of longer conversations; the NaNo Chatzy room returned; and you tolerated my 4th State of the Blog(ger) Address. Take a look down this year’s memory lane:
Process:
Getting Back In the Swing of Things
Ways To Narrow Down Ideas
What To Do When Ideas Are Lacking
Fleshing Out Ideas
How To Choose Ideas That Last
Is My Plot Too Full?
Plotting: Modifying The 10-Point Plot Model For Multiple-Narrator POVs
Plotting: Staggering Side Plot Climaxes
Plotting: When Side Characters’ Stories Are More Intriguing
Retooling A Character To Really Be Something
Character Arcs: Jerks & Nice Characters
Character Arcs: Static VS. Dynamic
Worldbuilding Without Burning Out
Creating Immersive Worlds
Texture Building & Building Up An Undeveloped World
Planning For Happy or Bittersweet Endings
Secondhand Embarrassment
Write What You Want To Read And Why It May Or May Not Work
Thinking Yourself Out Of Corners
Staying Motivated During Redrafting
Handling Rejection
Craft:
Things I Want To See More Of: (part one) (part two)
Things I Want To See Less Of: (part one) (part two)
Expanding Plots & Connecting Points
Characterization Without Cramming
Describing Familiar Places
Scare Your Readers
Writing Third Person Omniscient
First Person Narration VS. Third Person Limited
Forming Narrative Voice Outside Of Dialogue
Multiple-Narrator POV With Limited Numbers Of Narrators
Telling Stories Over Decades
Naming Consistent With World
Naming: Desert Desert & The Dark Mountain
Determining Time Period
Translation Convention
Retelling The Classics
Showing A Character’s Age In First Person POV
Villains Hiding In Plain Sight
Writing Characters From A Group Not Your Own
Writing Queerplatonic Relationships
From Fanfiction To Original Fiction
National Novel Planning Month:
Returning to the second half of a novel
Notes to make during re-reads
Setting up a back-up idea
Listen to your sounding-boards
NaNo prep for short stories and essays
Prepping from scratch on short notice
National Novel Writing Month:
Week One: Never Too Early to Start
Week Two: Never Too Late to Start
Week Three: You’ve Been Part of Something Huge
Week Four: My Hope For You
Week Five: Meeting More Than Wordcount Goals
Grammar & Publishing:
Pros and Cons of Pseudonyms
The Proper Use of En- and Em-dashes
The Proper Punctuation Of Dialogue
Querying An Illustrated Story Aimed 8-12
Topical Discussions:
Places to Learn Culture
Separating Mythical Creatures With Similar Traits
Differentiating Types of Magic In Various Races
What Position Do Centaur Sleep In?
Non-Harry Potter Wands
Life On a Water World
Blending Magic & Technology
Contraception in Fantasy
Cultural Ideas Of Record Keeping & History
Time Travel
Religion Or Philosophy?
Combining Disparate Ideas: Western & Fantasy
Drug Use In the Middle Ages
Kingdoms Grown From Scratch
Why Was Harry Potter So Popular?
Centaur, Dryads, and Merfolk
Creating Alien Species
An Exercise In Developing Demigods
Book Recommendations:
The Horse and His Boy
The Paper Magician
The Hangman’s Daughter
Pear’s Personal Favorites
Encouragement:
I don’t feel like I have enough experience
Similar but not the same (x)
Trust in your ability to grow
How to celebrate working out a sticky bit
For all you non-NaNo-ers out there
Building confidence
I used to be good…what now?
Is it wrong to write as much for validation as for pleasure?
No matter what, you are a writer (aka, Pear got angry)
