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Ideation: Where Do Ideas Come From?
Laura Drake "Where do you get your ideas?" Every writer has been asked this at least a dozen times. In fact, famous authors have come up with outrageous answers, so they don't have to go into it. Think...
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Share Your Golden Writing Wisdom!
Laura Drake There are SO many things that I wish I'd known in the beginning (or even yesterday). We all could use help/encouragement, and some advice is just too good not to share. Like my all-time...
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Character First
Oh, I know there are those of you who won't agree with me. You'll say plot is more important. I'll make my case with the beginnings of two popular plot-heavy stories. The Hunger Games by Suzanne...
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11 Greatest Hits from Our Hosts
Remember when we used to buy a whole album of music from an artist? If you don't remember, just roll with me anyway. (And stop making me feel so old!) Quite a few of my albums—both vinyl and CD—are...
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Social Media: You're Doing it Wrong
Laura Drake Everyone has seen Mr. Mom, right? My favorite line from the whole movie is when Michael Keaton is dropping his kids off at school, pulling into the circular drive against traffic, and like...
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The Hardest Goodbye
Laura I looked it up. This blog was born in April of 2010, when our critique group sat in Charla Rae’s office and came up with the crazy idea of a blog to help writers improve their craft and not feel...
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Share Your Favorite Line at WITS!
We've all been working hard on writing goals, NaNoWriMo and butt-in-chair. Let's reward ourselves with some FUN! Share a favorite sentence or paragraph of your current WIP (work-in-progress) or even...
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Use Comparison for Power
Laura Drake Capture your reader's heart AND mind with comparisons Description, run-on words, similes and metaphors are all ways to get your meaning across to your reader. I got the first two, but...
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One Word to Guide Your Writing Journey in 2020
Our Writers in the Storm team chose single guiding words in 2016, and 2017, 2018, and 2019. Ellen My word for 2020: Hope Hope is my favorite four letter word. It keeps me moving forward. Even in the...
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First Page Critique
I’m currently teaching my First Five Pages class at Lawson Writer’s Academy. I love helping writers strengthen their all-important openings. Joe Zarek is one of my students, and has agreed to allow me...
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