By Sharla Rae One of the things we've discussed in our critique meetings is the tendency all writers have to repeat certain words and phrases. “Echoes” is a term I’ve heard applied to frequently repeated words. Read your chapter out loud, and that’s exactly what they sound like. Common Causes of Echoes: Helpful Echo-Zapping Sites […]

by Erika Marks First draft. Talk about two words that manage to strike both excitement and fear in the hearts of all of us who write, yes? After having published three books and now deep in the middle of my fourth, I’d like to think I’ve got this whole first draft thing sewed up. Except, […]

by Jenny Hansen One of my favorite speakers on writing is Jennifer Crusie. For some reason, she makes sense to me...as if she has an expressway dug directly into my writing mind. Stephen Cannell (creator of The Rockford Files) was the man who etched 3-Act Structure on my brain, but for turning points it was […]

Or... Turning Whine into Gold by Kathryn Craft I’d like to thank the team here at Writers in the Storm for letting me blow in with a series on attitude adjustment. If you think this has nothing to do with becoming an author, you couldn’t be more wrong! From our first words tentatively pressed to the […]

By Piper Bayard Everything I know about writing I learned from belly dancing. Yes, belly dancing. How can this be? Art is Creativity, channeled into a three-dimensional form. It is the same basic process regardless of the medium, so the act of becoming proficient in any art is the same: discipline, practice, and dancing. Dancing? […]