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Tag Archives: Writing Exercise

On Inspiration: Making the Most of Week One

Yesterday I talked about some of the pitfalls of chasing inspiration, and the importance of finishing projects. That might seem like a premature topic, less than a week into a month-long marathon, but Week One is the foundation or your noveling month. That’s why I was thanking Courtney yesterday for her comments on Wednesday. She [...]

On Scene Lists: What Your Story Needs

We’ve been talking about long synopses and scene lists this week. Yesterday I went into some detail on what scene lists are for. Today I want to tell you how to write one. It shouldn’t be hard, but it’s definitely going to take some time and thought. So let’s get started! Meat on the Bones [...]

On Scene Lists: Complications

As my sister so kindly pointed out, I’ve fallen a bit behind on the blog posts lately. And that’s after cutting my weekly commitment by half. I still mostly blame schoolwork, but that’s really just my temporary excuse. Give me a week, and I’ll be able to blame NaNoWriMo for a full month. After that…well, [...]

On Narrative Scenes: Writing a Scene

This week we’re talking about narrative scenes — the storytelling elements that clarify your characters and progress your plot. How Scenes Work As I said yesterday, every scene in your story must move your story forward. That can consistent of character-building, occasionally, and really only in the first act, but in most genres you want [...]

New Weekly Schedule

Well, as I said last Thursday, in light of my ridiculously busy fall schedule, I’ve been toying with the idea of dropping my weekly Technical Writing series here at Unstressed Syllables. At the same time, I said I thought I’d probably have last week’s series for you this week. I don’t. I received a proof [...]