Please welcome this weeks guest Peggy Wirgau for The Journey. She answers the question: How have you seen God work in your writing journey? Around the time I learned to read came my love for writing. If I had time to spare during a school day in first grade (and I usually did) I composed little rhymes and stories in my head, then wrote them on a large sheet of blue-lined paper from the stack near the window of my classroom. Writing was a joy; fun and freeing, and I couldn’t get enough of it. … [Read more...]
I is for ISBN (International Standard Book Number)
As I sat here thinking toward the end of March what I'd do for each letter of the alphabet over the month of April, one of those letters that's hard to find a word for is the letter 'I'. I wanted to keep my theme going with either literary terms or something writing related and the only thing I could come up with was ISBN. When you're a writer and one day your book gets published, that little number is huge. It's almost like a fingerprint in that an ISBN is unique to each book published. It … [Read more...]
H is for Hook
The hook. One of the most important aspect to an entire book is the hook. You have to hook the reader from the first sentence, first paragraph, first page, first scene, first chapter, and even at the beginning of each scene or chapter. It's what catches the reader's attention and draws them further into the story to where they will want to read more and more. However, if you don't have a great hook, the chances are you may have lost your reader before they've even given you story a chance, … [Read more...]
G is for Genre
When it comes to writing fiction, there is a plethora of things we could write about. One of the first things we need to narrow our choices down to is what genre do we wish to write in. Since I started to write fiction, I've heard time and time again that the genre you need to write in is the genre you read and usually you want to write in the one you read the most because you are most familiar with the format. For me that genre would be romance. I like all versions of it: contemporary, … [Read more...]
F is for FictionFinder.com
I thought I'd share a site with you that maybe you're not aware of. Ever want to find a really great Christian book and don't want to go to some place like Amazon to find it? You can go to this website FictionFinder.com. Fiction finder has almost every Christian author you can think of as well as every genre. You can search by title, author, ISBN, publication date, genre, social issue, or even by the type of content in the book such as how much mystery you want in a book, romance, conflict, … [Read more...]
E is for Ebook
Have you noticed the amount of ebooks now available for us to purchase today. They are so prevalent. There are so many authors going the indie route as they have more control over how their book is published, or for that matter, getting it published at all. Twenty years ago, if you wanted to see your book in print, you had to go to one of the big New York publishers and hope, that by some small miracle, they'd publish your book. Today you can go to a place like CreateSpace and publish your … [Read more...]
D is for Deep POV
In many of today's novel, the writer wants to delve deeper with their stories giving the reader a more in-depth look into who the characters are and what they're thinking. The technique being used is called deep POV (point of view). I remember when it was first suggested that I do this with my fiction novel. I had not earthly clue what that was. I understood POV to be what character the scene would be told from whether it was first person, third person, omniscient. However, deep POV was a new … [Read more...]
The Journey with Elizabeth Kitchens
Please welcome this weeks guest Elizabeth Kitchens for The Journey. She answers the question: How have you seen God work in your writing journey? As a writer of fairy tales, it’s fitting that I am under a curse. Not a curse to prick my finger on a spinning wheel’s spindle or to be a beast, but to write. But if writing is a curse, then I’ll happily live with it. Actually, what my father was referring to when he called writing “the family curse” was the frustration that happens when you’re a … [Read more...]
C is for Character Sketch
When I began to write the fiction novel I'm working on I had no clue how to really do it. There was so much I needed to learn. My true growth started after I became a member of ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers) and joined the large critique group they have. Over that first month in that group it was amazing how much I had learned. Yet, I had so much more to learn and am still doing so now. I came to realize that I'm a plotter. One day I had an idea to write a quick and concise outline … [Read more...]
B is for Backstory
How do we get to know the characters of the stories we either write or read about. One way is to weave backstory into book. However, you don't want an info dump of information where you completely lose your reader as they've lost interest with your novel. You want to engage the reader from the first page to the last. One place considered a no-no is to put backstory in the first chapter, and especially the first scene. As a reader they may say who cares because she wants to feel like she's … [Read more...]