Angela Booth's Writing Blog

Your Short Fiction Formula: The Easiest-Ever Writing Process (Workshop)

Write short fiction, starting today

You can write suspenseful, page-turning short fiction readers love (and buy.) What if you had a process to quickly write short stories in any and all genres? Here it is…

Your Short Fiction Formula: The Easiest-Ever Writing Process (Workshop)

In this workshop, I (Angela) share a formula which makes writing commercial short stories easy and fun. (BTW, if you've ever wondered how to easily plot fiction you'll discover how in this workshop.)

Start writing short fiction immediately on download. The Workshop is short, practical and powerful.

 

Your Short Fiction Formula Workshop includes:

• 11 videos (one hour viewing time) + video transcription;

• A Short Fiction Formula presentation in PDF;

• Exercises in PDF;

• Feedback and coaching on your exercises.

Download the complete workshop and start writing today.

via www.angelaswritingclasses.com

Writing Challenges: 4 Easy Tricks To Overcome Them

Tell your audience about your challenge

Imagine one person from your target audience as clearly as you can.

Write an email message to this person. (You can do it in your mail program if that makes it seem more real to you.)

Start your message with: Dear Bob, my problem is…

This sounds like a psychological trick. It is and it works.

via peneloperedmont.com

Deep Habits: WorkingMemory.txt (The Most Important Productivity Tool You've Never Heard Of)

It’s easy to start such blocks with a reasonable plan, such as “let me answer some e-mails.” But this will soon generate many more new obligations than you can fit into your limited working memory at one time.

At this point, you might start lurching around, perhaps trying to knock off the new obligations as they arise (so you don’t forget them), then giving up on this goal as futile, then seeing even more urgent messages, and having those generate even more things that you can’t quite finish all at once, and then, the next thing you know, you look up after an hour of frenzied e-mailing and feel more overwhelmed than when you began!

Whew.

The solution to such scenarios, I will argue, is to augment your limited neuronal capacity with some digital help…

The WorkingMemory.txt File

via www.calnewport.com

Stumbling Blocks and Obstacles: How to Overcome Creative Ruts

Stop resenting the ruts.

Wix VP of Design Hagit Kaufman (@hagitkaufman) has chosen to change her perspective on being in a rut. Instead, she sees it as an opportunity, “I used to hate it. These days I resent it less, because I now know that it always brings me to something or somewhere new.  A new idea, a new way of thinking or something simpler, like putting two old things together in a new way.”  

Payal Vaidya (@payalcv) also sees creative block as an opportunity rather than resenting it. She asks how she can look at it from a different perspective, or even try on different personas who might solve the problem from a new angle, “How might Paula Scher approach this or what would Debbie Millman ask?”

via 99u.adobe.com

The 30-60-90 Plan: The action plan version of goals

I want to introduce you to a simple framework that will break your goal down and allow you to see how you will accomplish it in 90 days. It’s the 30-60-90 plan. Or as I like to call it: the action plan version of your goals.

In a 30-60-90 plan, you set a goal to achieve in 90 days then work backward through the months to give yourself a set of milestones and a timeline to work in.

As you stay on track and achieve each milestone it becomes inevitable that you’ll accomplish the larger 90-day goal.

via planningwithmaggierae.com

Writing Platform Kickstart: Your Brand Statement And Tagline

Big tip: your brand is crafted: it’s relevant to your audience. This is why many authors use several pen names in self-publishing: it makes it easier to brand a name because you craft an image which relevant to that name’s audience.

You’ll see many female authors creating a pen name from initials and a surname if they’re writing thrillers. Many male authors choose a female pen name if they’re writing romances.

via www.angelabooth.com

From Hemingway to Haruki Murakami – great writers’ tips about working from home

Have a routine and stick to it

You’ll need to lock in a routine fairly quickly and stick to it if you want to be productive working from home.

Writers in full throttle will have a schedule that wouldn’t look out of place in the military. They get up at the same time each day, have a word count goal, a time when they put down their pens, a time set aside for exercise, a time when they start drinking and – for today’s writers –a discipline around using the internet and social media.

Even interaction can be scheduled. As Graham Greene wrote in the End of the Affair, “When I was young not even a love affair would alter my schedule. A love affair had to begin after lunch.”

via www.theguardian.com

Beating Writer's Block 2020: How These Top 6 Apps will Help You Beat that Monster

HabitStreak: The Daily Tracker

We can't deny that most writers are procrastinators thanks to writer's block or any distraction along the way. This app solves this issue for you as it helps you track your daily tasks and have it registered in the system, making it possible for you to follow in a consistent and succeeding day. Apart from able to take notes of the user's daily tasks, HabitStreak can also send your every day a report of what you have accomplished or what you have missed that needs to be completed. 

This app may be a regular tracker app but will eventually lead you then to a healthier habit and prevent you from procrastinating. 

via www.techtimes.com

‘Writing as Edward stressed me out’: Stephenie Meyer on returning to Twilight | The Spinoff

You said to Variety in 2013: “I get further away [from Twilight] every day. For me, it’s not a happy place to be.” Can you elaborate on that, and whether it feels like a risk to you to re-enter that place now? What made it feel like a risk worth taking?

I am an introvert. I think that’s pretty common for writers; most of us prefer spending time with imaginary characters to facing the real world. At that point in time, it had been several years of intense engagement with the Twilight world, with a lot of required public interaction. It was all pretty far outside my comfort zone. I’m the kind of introvert who can do the occasional large group or public speaking, but then I need a long quiet time to recharge. I hadn’t been getting my necessary recharging, and it made me a little dramatic, ha ha. Since then, I’ve spent a few years hiding out in the quiet, and it’s helped me to feel a lot healthier. I needed the space and the isolation to keep going with Midnight Sun.

via thespinoff.co.nz

6 Strategies for Overcoming Obstacles That Hold You Back from Success

What Would You Do?

When you’re too close to an obstacle, it does look like a huge wall that blocks out the sun. In all the years of coaching clients with this strategy, I’ve never heard the same answer. The question is:

“If it feels like a huge wall, how would you like to get past it if you could using magic, super heroes, or anything else to instantly destroy it?”

I’ve heard people say they’d tunnel under it. They’d go along the wall until they came to the end. They’d climb over it, get Thor’s hammer and destroy it, or take it down brick-by-brick. But it’s never the same answer.

These crazy, impossible solutions to the wall give us clues on the best way to get over obstacles.

via www.lifehack.org

Writing Fiction Made Easier: 2 Tips For Using Flashbacks

1. Keep all flashbacks super-short: integrate them into your story

You can do a lot with a single sentence: “she remembered that they’d rarely quarreled, but now they raged at each other.”

Alternatively, you can integrate a flashback into a scene, so your story keeps its forward momentum.

The first line of a scene: “He’s left me.”

Naturally, the other person in the scene wants to know what happened. When did he leave? Why? Readers will have the same questions; this helps you to integrate a flashback.

via peneloperedmont.com

Excellent advice.

Plottr: Scene Stacks, Custom Outlines, Prologues, Undo / Redo, and More! - Plottr

What’s Coming Next

Thanks for your interest and support! Over the next several weeks, we have a bunch of new features planned, including:

• Scrivener Integration: To start, this will include the ability to export your Plottr file directly as a Scrivener file, and import Scrivener files into Plottr.
• Act Structure: The ability to create an overarching Act structure above the Chapter level.
• iPad app: The release of a dedicated Plottr iPad app, along with significant functionality improvements to the smartphone app.

via getplottr.com

Have I mentioned that I LOVE Plottr? Wonderful app for fiction authors.

NEW: Freelance Writing Zero To Hero — Angela Booth's Online Writing Classes and Programs

You can make the journey from zero (total beginner) to hero too

Everyone starts a writing career as a complete beginner, from zero.

It will never be as hard again.

Everything you do counts, even though it might not seem like it at the time. Over time, your tiniest communications and smallest actions get a big result: suddenly, you’re hero. You made your dreams happen, one baby step at a time. Often your dreams happen MUCH faster than you think possible.

Simple actions to big success: step by step to success

With this program, you’ll shortcut your path to success.

I promise.

If you love to write and follow this program, you’ll succeed as a writer.

You’ll benefit from my experience. Over the years, I’ve made horrible mistakes which derailed my career (in one case, for a decade.)

While the world’s changed since I tapped away on my Olivetti and IBM Selectric typewriters, freelance writing hasn’t changed. At all. Human nature is the same as it ever was. And the same kinds of people and situations are still taking advantage of inexperienced writers and other creatives.

via www.angelaswritingclasses.com

The New Dashboard In Ulysses (great!)

The Annotations view gathers all kinds of inline annotations in your text, such as comments, deletions, and marked text passages. Moreover, you can attach notes to a sheet from here.

In the Attachments view, you’ll see a list of your sheet’s images and videos. If you want to attach an image for further reference, which doesn’t belong in the text, you can do so here.

Last but not least, the Revision view gathers your annotations and the system’s spell check. In addition to that, you can access Ulysses’ advanced grammar & style check from here – just click on “Check Text”.

via ulysses.app

I write client material and blog posts in Ulysses, so I'm thrilled with the new Dashboard.

It's such a relief not to have floating windows everywhere. :-)

Editing Your Novel: Simple Scrivener Collections’ Tricks

1. Create a Collection for each major character

You can do this via a Saved Search, or manually. I prefer to do it manually. It gives you more control. Let’s say you’re writing a first draft, or are editing. Select a document in the Binder, right click on it, and from the right-click menu, choose Add to Collection/ New Collection. I like to create a icon for the documents in a Collection too. Then I can spot them at a glance in the Drafts folder. To add an icon to a document, select it, right click, and choose Change Icon. Pick an icon you’ll use for every document in that particular Collection.

2. Create other Collections: for setting, minor characters, plot elements — create as many as you like

While I’m editing, I tend to end up with 15 or more Collections. Whenever I think of something I need to check over the entire novel, I create a Collection.

via peneloperedmont.com