12 Days of Planning Your Novel: Creating Conflict Through Character Motivation

12 Days of Planning Your Novel: Creating Conflict Through Character Motivation

Wow, here we are at day six in my twelve day novel planning series already! I hope you have been enjoying the posts so far and are gleaning some useful tips. This series is intended to prepare you to start working on your novel during Christmas break (if you get one), however, you can use these tips to get started anytime.

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12 Days of Planning Your Novel: Start Your Outline

12 Days of Planning Your Novel: Start Your Outline

The next step in planning your novel involves mapping out the major scenes in your novel. In my last post, I talked about the difference between story and plot, and in today’s post we are going to be moving on from your story and starting to work more on your plot.

In the post about conducting research for your novel, I mentioned how genre stories have obligatory scenes. We are going to be working with those obligatory scenes today so if you haven’t finished researching the kinds of scenes you need for your novel, this is a great place to start.

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12 Days of Planning Your Novel: Story vs Plot

12 Days of Planning Your Novel: Story vs Plot

Here we are at day (or step) number four in my planning your novel series. I hope you’re getting excited to start creating a story involving the characters you created in step three. Today I want to discuss the ‘big picture’ when it comes to your novel so I’ll be discussing the difference between story and plot.

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12 Days of Planning Your Novel: Character Development

12 Days of Planning Your Novel: Character Development

Welcome to post number three in my 12-post series about planning a novel. 12 Days of Planning Your Novel is a fun tribute to the 12 Days of Christmas with the goal of being ready start writing your novel during the actual twelve days of Christmas (December 25 - January 5). Here’s where you can find the first two posts.

Step 1: Brainstorm

Step 2: Research

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12 Days of Planning Your Novel: Research, Research, Research

12 Days of Planning Your Novel: Research, Research, Research

I hope you enjoyed Day 1 of planning your novel. Now that you've figured out what type of novel you want to write, it’s time to move on to the next stage: research. Even if you're writing a story that takes place in a completely made up world, you'll still have a bit of research to do.

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12 Days of Planning Your Novel: What Will You Write?

12 Days of Planning Your Novel: What Will You Write?

Welcome to Day 1 of Planning Your Novel. I thought it would be fun to do a series based on one of my favourite Christmas songs: The 12 Days of Christmas.

Now, the 12 days of Christmas are actually December 25 - January 5, but I wanted to release all 12 parts of this series before Christmas so that if you are following along with me, you’ll be all set to write during the actual 12 days of Christmas, a time when many people have some time off. Of course, you can work through this series anytime you want. I understand the holidays can be a very busy time!


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What's the Difference Between a Beta Reader and an Advance Reader?

What's the Difference Between a Beta Reader and an Advance Reader?

I have been very fortunate to work with some amazing beta and advance readers. Recently, I realized that although some of these readers are very helpful, they don’t always understand the difference in the role they play when acting as a beta reader versus an advance reader.

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100 Words About Love

100 Words About Love

My October Hello Writer Subscription included a prompt to write a 100-word story about love. I decided to take this on because my next project is a historical romance, and I thought this would be the perfect thing to get me in the right mind frame for writing a romance. Then I realized, I had no idea where to start.

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