By Melanie Dickerson I get a lot of emails and messages from teen writers asking for writing tips. The two questions I get asked most frequently: “Where do you get your ideas?” and “What do you do when you get stuck?” Since many of my novels are fairy tale retellings, I start out checking into the original fairy tale and …
How Brainstorming and Eating Pizza with Friends can Lead to a Book!
By Rose Allen McCauley Did you know the Twelve Days of Christmas start on December 25 and end on January 6th on Epiphany–the day the wise men first saw the Christ Child? To most people it means figuring out something, and to writers it can mean: an illuminating discovery, realization, or… a revealing scene or moment. Three of my Kentucky …
“Drawing” on Your Creative Resources
by Betsy Lowery As a writer whose nonfiction offerings lean more toward deep ideas than toward useful application, I’m happy to offer to my ACFW community a very simple and concrete idea. In chapter 9 of The Wrong Type of Love (unfinished sequel to my first and unpublished novel, A Stranger’s Promise), a couple of young musicians need some inspiration …
Help! I’m Lost and Can’t Find My Way
By Ane Mulligan I’d hit the 43,000-word mark in the fourth book in my Chapel Springs series. I knew the characters like I know myself. Better even, since I don’t pretend they don’t have faults. But the story stalled on me. It lacked the usual “feel” of its sister books. It was missing the heart. I had to force myself …
Those Stories in My Head
By Martha Rogers Like the raindrops in the song, these stories keep falling on head and filling it with ideas. Peg Phifer posted a quote on our Novel Track writing loop, and it suits me to a T. “GOD PUT ME HERE TO ACCOMPLISH A CERTAIN NUMBER OF THINGS. AT THIS RATE, I’LL NEVER DIE!” That’s exactly how I feel …
A Brainstorming Session
By Lillian Duncan So, I’m sitting at my computer pondering what to write for the first of my four ACFW blogs for the year. Time for a brainstorming session! I could try to find a sneaky way to promote my newly-released mystery novella, DEADLY INTENT. But would that really help anyone but me? Probably not so…REJECTED. I could pontificate about …
Story Glimmers
by Ann H. Gabhart A writer needs time to gather a story, to let the glimmers spark out of that mysterious dark center of the imagination where stories are born. At times the glimmers may sparkle but still be as elusive as a sunbeam. You see it but you can’t quite grab it. I’ve been at the glimmer stage for …
Finding the Ideas
By Katherine Reay I’m at the beginning of a new story. I handed in my latest manuscript last week and, while I wait for the first round of edits, “the little grey cells” are busy seeking new characters, new emotions and new questions. It’s a fun time, but it’s also a daunting time. A blank computer screen is intimidating. You …
Creative Outlines
by Donna K. Rice Several years ago, while browsing an airport bookshop, I spotted Idea Mapping by Jamie Nast. Intrigued, I picked it up and took it along on my journey. The book explores the process of taking ideas, speeches, business concepts, or whatever project you might think of and mapping it out on one page using bubbles, connecting arrows, …
Mining Your Life for Stories
By Marta Perry A number of years ago, I taught an evening adult class on journal writing. When the time came at our second session for participants to read their work, I felt a little apprehensive. What if nobody was willing to read? Would I be left with an hour of class time to fill? I shouldn’t have worried. The …