A writers’ group is a collection of writers who get together to discuss each other’s work. Each writer submits a piece to the group and as a group, suggestions are given, issues are discussed and an effort is made to provide guidance to make each piece better. This is the model of most creative writing
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The Law of Diminishing Randomness: As a good story moves forward, the events become less and less random. One of the differences between real life and a short story is that in a short story, events happen for a reason. In the ordinary world, there are plenty of events that happen in the day that
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In my last post I discussed the second draft and suggested that people use it to flesh out the world of their story. Here are a few areas in which you can expand upon your first draft. Physical descriptions The appearance of characters The geography and landscape of the settings The general climate and the
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People write in many different ways. Some people work slowly, trying to make every detail perfect the first time. Other people write quick, messy first drafts that they then tame and refine as they edit. Most people fall somewhere in between.For my part, I tend to write first drafts quickly. I will go back and
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Several years ago I happened to end up in the same writing workshop as a woman with whom I had gone to elementary school. For the workshop, she submitted a short story that was taken from her childhood. Because we had gone to school together, I knew almost all of the characters in her story.
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What is the definition of a short story? I define a short story as a brief, focused fictional piece that contains at minimum the following key elements: plot, setting, characterization and some sort of resolution. How long should a short story be? In my opinion, the optimal length for a short story is between ten
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After you have finished editing and polishing the draft of your novel, you are going to want to get some initial feedback. This is for a number of reasons: A fresh perspective can often catch errors and problems that you can no longer see after looking at your novel for so long. It helps to
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At this point, you are ready to perform a comprehensive reevaluation of your novel. Until now, the draft of your novel has been too rough for clear evaluation. Distractions such as grammar, spelling and chronology make it difficult to honestly evaluate your work. If you’ve been following the steps, you should have a relatively clean
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Sample information guide This is a brief example of an information guide. There are no hard and fast rules for information guides, so feel free to customize this to fit your needs. Spelling and Usage Note: This is a place to put down any special words or jargon that the characters use. Acronyms: OCD: Obsessive
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What is an information guide? An information guide is a much like a style guide. A style guide is a set of rules and guidelines for a publication. Typical style guides focus on issues such as grammar, usage, spelling and capitalization. When creating a guide for a novel, however, there many additional things to keep
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