An Honest Story About a Writer Accomplishing Goals Inch by Inch
Ready or not, 2025 is knocking. I’m not sure if I want to answer, but of course, like you, I will, and I want to go forward with a plan. If you like a plan and want a little help creating one for the coming year, here’s a goal-setting exercise you can use to set intentions and mile markers for 2025.
It’s Never Too Late to Start Writing Your Novel: Tips on Mindset and Story Development From Two Certified Book Coaches
Do you ever feel like it’s too late?
Think that maybe you missed the boat heading toward your writing dreams?
Maybe you should have started in your teens, twenties, thirties, fifties, or some other decade before where you are now.
If you said yes to any of that, then episode twelve of the Write It Scared Podcast is where I will prove you wrong. Well, me and my guest, award-winning YA Fantasy Author and Certified Book Coach, Cassie Newell.
How To Craft a Compelling Backstory for Your Novel and Keep Track of It!
If you consider a story to be one large event that creates an irreversible change, then it must have a beginning to have an end. It must start from somewhere and be in a particular state to experience said change, and there must be a reason for that initial state of being.
That reason, my friend, is the backstory.
Crafting a compelling backstory is essential to creating realistic characters with motivations and complex problems the reader will relate to.
How to Craft Credible Villains
Antagonists will create obstacles for your protagonist to overcome. Depending on your intention, they can also highlight specific aspects of your main character and make them more or less relatable. The villain wants to hurt the protagonist — usually in the worst way possible and on purpose!
How to Craft a Corruption Arc: A Case Study of Walter White
The corruption arc is the easiest to spot of all the negative character arcs. You know this one. It’s the good person gone bad story, where a character begins on the morally “good” side of the tracks, and they understand right and wrong, but more than that, they believe in doing what’s right.
How To Write An Emotionally Satisfying Resolution For Your Fiction Novel
The end of the story has one seemingly simple job–to satisfy the reader. Let them say, ah, now that was worth it.
The key to a great resolution is to allow for emotional resonance between the story, the main character or characters, and the reader.
So how do we do that?
First, let’s remember where we’ve been to better understand where we’re going. And keep in mind that a story is about one thing: showing an irreversible change in the main character, the situation, or both.
The story’s resolution begins right after the last climactic event and continues to the final page.
How To Write A Gripping Climax For Your Fiction Novel
The climax is a series of connected scenes that take us to the last dramatic change (big moment), where the protagonist and the antagonist (bad guy, bad situation, bad internal flaw) go head-to-head. Someone wins, someone loses, and because of this, our character’s inner journey is completed. After that, there’s no more story to tell.
This is a big deal. It’s rubber meet the road time, and the story will live on in the reader’s mind as an epic success or a floppy failure based on this moment.
No pressure, right? Ha!
How To Write An Effective All Is Lost Moment And Dark Night Of The Soul
The All is Lost is an action beat played out in a single scene or chapter that lands right at the 75% mark of the novel. This event shatters all hope of the protagonist reaching their main external objective. It closes out Act III in Four-Act Story Structure. In Three Act Structure, it’s also called the Third Plot Point.
As the name suggests, the All is Lost moment is your main character’s rock bottom emotional low point. They were so close to getting what they wanted, but now, because of this event, there’s no chance in hell they’ll recover, or so it seems.
Turning the Tide: How to Write a Powerful Act III That Builds to Crisis
I like to think of Act III in the Four-Act story structure (from the midpoint to the all is lost) as the time when shit gets real and stays real, and the hero fights with proactive energy and new information.
Things that occur:
Progressive complications and higher stakes. After all, there is no turning back for the main character.
The second pinch point, where the antagonist gives the main character a smack down and foreshadows the All is Lost Moment (the Third Plot Point in a three-act structure) and the story’s climax.
All is Lost: represents the Moment in the story where all hope is lost in the main character reaching the external story goal.
How To Craft A Solid Midpoint For Your Novel
The Midpoint is all about shifts.
It’s a significant moment, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be loud or aggressive. It can be subtle.
But something opens the character’s eyes to the bigger picture. This event will make the character stop and take stock of their situation and circumstances, and the personal stakes increase yet again because of this new understanding.
The Midpoint will change the trajectory of the character’s life in much the same way the inciting incident did, and the decision they make here will shape the rest of the story.
How To Avoid The Saggy Middle When Writing a Novel: The Pinch Point Discussion
How to avoid writing a saggy middle for your novel
The middle make up the vast major it of a novel. It’s a lot of ground cover, and my work with writers and my flailing has shown me that this is part of the story where things can get repetitive, drawn out, and bogged down. To put it simply: boring.
How can a writer prevent this?
Cue the Pinch Point discussion.
How to Challenge Your Character and Deepen the Plot in Act II
What happens in Act II:
Our protagonist struggles to come to grips with new information, possibly new relationships, or relationships that have taken on a new meaning. They are swimming upstream, and the water is choppy. There may or may not be sharks. There are probably sharks. Even though things are tough and a lot of internal processing is going on, they are still actively pursuing their goal, which is not pretty. They fail—a lot.
They continue acting from their false beliefs, flaws, and fears and don’t have the emotional or physical skills to conquer the main story problem yet. They may not even be completely aware of the main story problem, but they are learning, which is the point.
The Choice: Crafting the First Major Turning Point in Your Novel
In the last blog article, we talked about the inciting incident, which is the first significant disruption to the character’s life linked to the plot. The character can resist or engage, but they are not fully committed. They could walk away and often try. However, if we let them, they can teeter here on a threshold because the stakes aren’t personal enough yet.
We need to make our character go all in.
This brings us to our next big story moment- what I like to call The Choice. As with all things in storytelling, it goes by many names: the First Plot Point, the Point of No Return, Crossing the Threshold for Campbell fans, and Break into Two via Save The Cat. I like The Choice because that is what the character needs to do to move forward. They must decide to enter the new world of act two, where they are swimming upstream in uncertain waters. And something very compelling needs to happen to make them willing to swim with the sharks.
How to Craft an Inciting Incident for Your Fiction Novel
As with all things in writing, the inciting incident goes by many names: the catalyst, the call to adventure, the plot thrust, and the hook.
How to Structure the First Act of a Novel: The Setup
Act I encompasses the first twenty-five percent of the novel. It’s everything between the hook and the kick-off of the second act, including the inciting incident, but unfortunately, it’s misunderstood.
The purpose of the Setup is to establish the story’s premise. It answers the “what is this going to be about?” question. It’s a working part of the story, and it whets our appetite for more.
How to Write a Narrative Hook That Grabs Readers from the First Line
It was the book that killed her. Dun. Dun. Dunn.
The narrative hook is a tool writers use to tease readers, to make them curious, nervous, anxious, or all of the above, plus more! The goal is to entice the reader to keep reading!
Have you ever heard the expression the first sentence makes a promise to the reader? That is what a good hook does. It promises that reading the book will be a rewarding experience.
Why Story Structure Isn’t a Formula—And Why Every Writer Still Needs It
Story structure can make new writers nervous because they worry about following a formula. How can you be original if you are essentially following a recipe?
No need to worry, writer.
Story structure is in no way formulaic.
As Shawn Coyne, author of The Story Grid, puts it, story structure is form, not a formula.
How Narrative Distance Impacts Show vs. Tell in Fiction Writing
I want to cover Narrative Distance and how it relates to show vs. tell.
If you are new to writing fiction, this term might make you scratch your head. If you're an old hat, this will be a familiar review.
How to Choose the Right Point of View For Your Novel
One of the most powerful tools in a writer’s storytelling arsenal is point of view (POV). It shapes how your readers experience your story, how much they know at any given moment, and how emotionally connected they feel to your characters.
How to Write a Killer Opening Scene in a Fiction Novel
Opening scenes are critical, especially the first three pages. They can make or break your fiction novel. It's often where the reader chooses to keep going or put the book down. Permanently.
So what are the most critical pieces of a story to include in your opening pages?