The Star Wars franchise is one of my favorites of all time, and while Rogue One and The Empire Strikes Back are at the top of my list, I have a special place in my heart for Episode IV: A New Hope. We’ve done a bunch of 3-act analyses over the past few months, and… Read more »
For the past year, lawyer-hubby, the nerdlings and I have been living in a temporary location as our home gets renovated. We hit some bumps in the road and only now, eleven months after moving out, are we finally able to start making any progress on the construction. This got me thinking about how home… Read more »
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about endings, in particular the denouement. The denouement is that “sigh of relief” that happens after the climax, that extra scene or two (or many) that allows the story to wrap up and come to a satisfying conclusion. It got me wondering why we even need a denouement. After… Read more »
I’ve been thinking about supporting characters a lot lately. These are the unsung heroes of storytelling, and yet they are often misunderstood. We might call them “side” characters or “secondary” characters as if they play second fiddle to our main character, but the truth is they play a very specific purpose in the story. You… Read more »
Sometimes we lose our writing mojo and, try as we might, we struggle with building momentum around our writing. No matter what we do, we can’t seem to get in a writing mood. This state of creative paralysis can happen for any number of reasons, including: In the last Writer Fuel, I talked about creative… Read more »
For the past several months, I have been going through a period of creative burnout. Maybe it’s the aftermath of COVID and how it has changed the way we learn and interact online. Or maybe it’s because some things in my non-writing life have just been really hard lately. Or maybe it’s the result of… Read more »
Point of view is one of the trickiest and most technical aspects of writing, but it’s also my favorite. There are so many choices and possibilities—it’s like being in the literary version of a candy store! At the same time, however, this variety of options can be overwhelming, making us feel like we’re being pulled… Read more »
As a New Year’s resolution in January of 2007, I decided I was a writer and would start acting like one. No more excuses. I was going to stop complaining and saying that I’d start writing “someday.” I would glue my backside to the chair and start writing right now. The problem was, I had… Read more »
At the end of January, I pulled out an old notebook and started journaling. Eleven months and nine notebooks later, I have written something just about every day since then. (Okay, I’m not counting the week I was on vacation at the end of June. I gave myself a free pass on that. After all,… Read more »
