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2011

• The Writing Gifts I'm Most Thankful for This Christmas: The (mostly) writing-specific gifts I'm thankful for this Christmas.
• How Do You Decide Which Story You Should Write?: Five suggestions for culling the real story idea contenders from the wannabes and also-rans.
• 25 "Under $25" Christmas Gifts for Writers: 25 Christmas gift ideas for the fellow writer on your list, all priced at $25 or less.
• Are Your Flashbacks Flashy or Flabby?: A good flashback is sometimes just the ticket for bringing to life an important event in your character's past.
• Action/Reaction - The Pistons Powering Your Story: What's the difference between action and reaction?
• 4 Reasons to Mimic the Masters - and 3 Reasons Not to: Let's take a look at what successful mimicry is and is not.
• How Do You Know Which Rules to Break?: Are there certain rules that are concrete and others that aren't?
• Do Readers See Your Characters the Way You Want Them To?: The wrong choice of just a single word can be enough to give readers a completely different perspective of a character.
• 10 Fear Busters for Writers: Let's take a look at ten methods for cracking our whips at our fears and forcing them to respond to our shouts of "back, back, vicious beast!"
• 5 Elements of a Resonant Closing Line: Explore the five elements that will help you craft the kind of closing line that caps your entire story and leaves readers with a feeling of unforgettable resonance.
• 5 Fun and Easy Ways to Lengthen Your Word Count: We see a lot of hype these days about books that are too lengthy for agents or editors to consider. But what about books that fall short of the expected word count?
• The Dangers of Character Overload: When authors are dealing with large casts of characters, readers sometimes find themselves in grave danger of character overload.
• What Elements Make a Good Book?: The one thing all readers share is their strong opinions about what makes a book resonate with them.
• 5 Elements of a Riveting First Line: Opening lines offer authors their first and best opportunity to make a statement about their stories.
• Why Your Hero Absolutely Must Pet a Dog: A little trick authors can use to make even their darkest anti-heroes sympathetic.
• Is Nothin' Happening in Your Scene?: Let's take a look-see at some of the signs your scene may be more of the nothin' sort than the happenin' sort.
• Why Your Protagonist and Antagonist Should Be Stuck Like Glue: Something has to be keeping your hero locked in his conflict with the antagonist - and vice versa.
• Captain America's 10-Step Guide to the Likable Hero: Likable characters require careful crafting if they're to come to life in a way that is not only believable but compelling.
• 10 Stylistic Mistakes Sabotaging Your Story: In writing, the little mistakes are often the big mistakes.
• 7 Ways to Make Family and Pets Respect Your Writing Time: Guidelines for getting friends, family, co-workers, and pets to respect your writing time - without your needing to resort to death threats.
• Why You Should Kick Your Story Aside and Write a Different One: Few authors reach publication with their first novel.
• What "The Story Knows Best" Really Means: What does this idea that "the story knows best" really mean?
• Deus Ex Machina: Latin for "Don't Do This in Your Story": You might find yourself walking through the yellow caution tape into the pothole of deus ex machina before you realize the danger.
• The Fast and Easy Guide to Writing Characters of the Opposite Gender: Writers too often create unrealistic characters by imposing their own perceptions (or fantasies) onto the opposite sex.
• Is Your Opening Line Lying to Your Readers?: Your opening line may be bristling with energy, danger, and barbed fishhooks with which to reel in your readers, but if the paragraph that follows pulls the old switcheroo, your reader is more likely to be irritated than impressed.
• Why There's No Such Thing as a Writing Expert - And Why That's a Good Thing: The more time we spend studying our craft and the more we learn, the easier it is to lose sight of our own fallibility.
• Save Your Readers From Boredom: Five Fool-Proof Preventatives: If you can avoid these five boredom bombs, you can slay reader apathy before it starts and keep them riveted from page one all the way through to the end.
• 4 Tricks for Picking the Perfect Word: Let's explore four sophisticated linguistic techniques for choosing and using words.
• Is Your First-Person Narrator Overpowering Your Story?: Let's take a look at some of the common pitfalls of the first-person narrator and how to avoid them.
• Are Happy Endings a Must?: To cap every story with a happy ending is dishonesty to both ourselves and our readers.
• The Kung Fu Panda Guide to Writing Action Scenes: You need to understand the basics of this integral type of scene if you're going to blind readers from overexposure to your action awesomeness.
• The Secret Ingredient of Original Stories: Sometimes the more we try to be original, the more hackneyed our stories end up sounding.
• Ideas for Constructing Your Own Writing Routine: What techniques are most useful for making the most of your daily writing time?
• Understanding - and Accepting - the Reasons You Write: Why do you write? Simple question that it is, it can be surprisingly difficult to answer.
• What Is a 50-Page Edit... and Why Will It Rock Your Story?: The 50-page edit centers us in our story, reminds us of what we've already written, and keeps us on track for the next 50 pages.
• How Not to Use Speaker Tags and Action Beats: Don't jeopardize your characters' witty dialogue with punctuation and stylistic mistakes.
• 3 Traits Your Hero and Villain Should Share: What if I told you that the best stories are those that feature protagonists and antagonists who share more in common than not?
• 4 Ways to Avoid the Pitfalls of a Writer's Solitude: As important as it is to claim large chunks of uninterrupted writing time, it's also important that we make time to actually live our lives.
• Why Writers Should Take Their Own Advice: I'm about to introduce you to the wisest writing mentor you’re ever likely to meet. Yourself.
• Why Vague Writing Is Weak Writing: If you are bold, precise, and definite in your choice of words, your readers will feel the power of your prose.
• Are You Asking These Important Questions About Your Fantasy Setting?: An overview of subjects and questions to keep in mind as you develop your speculative setting.
• What I Love Lucy Can Teach You About Writing Tics: Some words are overused so often that they find their way onto the Wanted: Dead or Alive list of practically every author, agent, and editor (not to mention reader).
• 5 Ways to Write Character Thoughts Worth More Than Penny: One of the key benefits of written fiction is also one of the most difficult techniques to master: the inner narrative of the characters.
• 8 Signs Your Writing Is Stuck in a Rut - And Why You Should Care: Laziness and fear - a writer's two great nemeses - do their best to keep us stuck in the writing rut.
• Are You Confusing Readers With Poor Cause and Effect?: It's all too easy for authors to risk confusing readers by showing the effect of an action, before showing the cause itself.
• The Good News? Writing Never Gets Any Easier: First-time novelists often make the mistake of believing their first novels will be the most difficult writing of their lives.
• Why You Should Read the Type of Stories You Write: Studying stories of the type you want to write is legitimately important research, and don't let anyone tell you differently.
• Getting Past the "This Stinks" Blues: One morning you boot up your computer, glance through the manuscript file, and realize "This stinks!" Now what do you do?
• Are You Using "There" as a Crutch?: Whenever you see the word "there" used as a pronoun, you can be sure it's being used as a crutch to hold up a weak and passive sentence.
• 10 Writing Resolutions You Can Fulfill: When we focus on the goals that are slightly more achievable, we're not only more likely to pull them off, but we'll also feel much better about ourselves come next year.