A question that comes up a lot in the writing groups I’m part of is the question of what alpha-readers and beta-readers do. What’s the difference? What is the purpose of each? Today, I wanted to tackle those questions and help you understand how best to work with each group. Continue reading “Alpha-Readers vs. Beta-Readers”
Category: Organization & Process
Worldbuilding Checklist – The Basics
Last week, I talked about the core elements a fictional culture needs, and over time I’ve written posts on many different worldbuilding concepts and how to build them well. Today, I want to share with you a worldbuilding checklist that includes all of the elements (both general to a world and specific to various cultures) that I see as integral to a functioning world. And I’ll include a printable version, too, so stick around to the end for that. Continue reading “Worldbuilding Checklist – The Basics”
Worldbuilding Process: Three Examples
I’ve said this before, but there are many ways to approach creating a fantasy world (or sci-fi world). Should you work outside-in or inside-out? Should you use vignettes? Beyond the basics, what is the best order to take things in? Those are questions that are going to be unique to each writer (and potentially each world), so I can’t give you a concrete answer, but in this post I’ll show you a few of the processes I use for my own worlds. Continue reading “Worldbuilding Process: Three Examples”
Preptober Prompts Day 2 – 2020
Another day, another prompt. Today, Maple‘s dare is to
change up your outlining process for a day!
I usually make a pretty straightforward outline—describing what each scene in each chapter needs to contain—but this post on Fearless Type about using mind maps to plot came into my inbox last night, and it looks like the perfect method for me to try out today. The Half-Elves is kind of a disorganized mess at the moment with a lot of pieces I’m not sure how to fit together, so hopefully mind mapping will help me organize all those pieces and see them more clearly (and not miss any of the little things I’ve started to set up for). The post mentions a handful of mind map format options, but I personally like using a digital program like FreeMind or Scapple, since it gives me infinite space and somewhat more order than I would have with my own handwriting, lol.
How about you? What does your plotting process usually look like, and what method would you like to try today?
NaNoWriMo Alternatives – Word Count Tracker Options & Community
I participated in National Novel Writing Month from 2014 all the way through 2020 or so, and I think the challenge of writing 50,000 words in 30 days is a great tool to get people writing and foster community among writers and just overall encourage authors. Toward the end of that run, however, the NaNoWriMo organization began making a lot of decisions based on politics, decisions that I personally found detrimental to the encouragement of community that is central to what NaNoWriMo has to offer—and only continued to make more and more controversial and outright unhealthy decisions until they were forced to shut down altogether. If you’re looking to replace a long-standing tradition of NaNoWriMo participation, or you’re looking for additional resources for a separate word count tracker or more targeted community, here’s a gathering of resources—both those that have been around for a while as well as those that have popped up since NaNoWriMo began to decline.
As a note, I do update this list periodically with new resources! If you have suggestions of your own, feel free to drop them in the comments as well. Continue reading “NaNoWriMo Alternatives – Word Count Tracker Options & Community”