Jami Gold's Blog: Jami Gold, Paranormal Author, page 13

How Can We Discover Our Vision and Goals?

Here's the latest from Jami Gold, Paranormal Author :

Those who follow my blog know that I’ve talked a lot over the years about how we need to determine our goals. The biggest reason I make such a big deal of the topic is because we tend to measure our success by whether we reach our goals. So if we don’t know what we’re reaching for, we might never feel successful.

In addition, knowing our goals can help us determine the right path for us:

Should we focus on readers, writing, or income? Do...

Do You Share Your Expertise?

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I’m re-running a post today because it’s the time of year that it applies again. Time to propose a guest post! *smile*

Many of us suffer from impostor syndrome, the feeling that we’re a fraud and it’s just a matter of time until others realize it. That feeling goes double (or more) in the writing world, where the learning curve is steep and we can feel like a newbie many times over.

Even after we get a handle on writing craft, we start ove...

Write Romance? Announcing a New Workshop!

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As I hinted at in my last post about the upcoming free Romance Writers Summit, I’m announcing a brand-new workshop. Yay!

I’ve been thinking about adding this workshop to my repertoire for about two years, but with all the chaos of my health issues, I haven’t had the time to put it together. Now… I’m making the time. *grin*

Over the years, my most popular writing resource has consistently been the Romance Beat Sheet. In fact, this tool has...

How to Get Expert Writing Advice…for Free!

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In case you missed it, last week Kris Kennedy shared the conclusion of her fantastic 5-part guest post series on Must-Read Backstory. Each entry of her series focused on a key idea for how we can make our backstory essential reading for readers of our story.

Part One: Make It Compelling Part Two: Develop a Single Defining Moment Part Three: Add Layers Part Four: Make Plot Tap Backstory, Hard Part Five: Ensure Character’s Beginning and End...

Backstory: Avoid Info Dumping by Making It Essential: Part 5 — Guest: Kris Kennedy

Here's the latest from Jami Gold, Paranormal Author :

I’ve often talked about how stories are about change. Even the simplest story will “arc” by ending up someplace different from where it started.

As a pantser (one who writes by the seat of their pants), I joke about how I use this knowledge of arc to “plan” my romance stories (where happy endings are mandatory):

“If point B is happy, point A must be… (all together now) …sad or unfulfilled in some way.”

Ta-da! *grin*

Unless we’re writing a...

Writing Projects: Are We Ever Really Done?

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A few months ago, I shared how I’m trying an experimental solution to fix a recurring infection that’s been disintegrating my jawbone. As I mentioned last month, the super-rare metal my surgeon used to trick my bone into regrowing doesn’t play well with x-rays, which made it impossible to confirm whether the bone had healed or not.

But during surgery last week, my surgeon was able to confirm that the experiment passed all his tests. Yay!

H...

Backstory: Avoid Info Dumping by Making It Essential: Part 4 — Guest: Kris Kennedy

Here's the latest from Jami Gold, Paranormal Author :

As we talked about the last few weeks in Part Two and Part Three of Kris Kennedy’s backstory series, the false beliefs or guiding principles that grow out of a character’s defining moment from their backstory are key to the emotional heart of our story. Exploring a character’s backstory through their struggle to learn and overcome reveals our story’s theme and piles on emotion.

But how do we make sure our story’s plot plays well with our c...

Building a Story: Chapters vs. Scenes

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We’ve talked before about how there’s no wrong way to get to “The End” when drafting and editing our book. All that matters is whether the finished story is compelling or enjoyable for readers.

We might…:

write by the seat of our pants plot everything in advance fall somewhere in the middle between plotting and pantsing break down story ideas into scene-by-scene notecards write the story linearly or chronologically jump around in our draf...

Backstory: Avoid Info Dumping by Making It Essential: Part 3 — Guest: Kris Kennedy

Here's the latest from Jami Gold, Paranormal Author :

As we talked about last week in Part Two of Kris Kennedy’s backstory series, the false beliefs or guiding principles that grow out of a character’s backstory defining moment are key to the emotional heart of our story. Our story’s theme emerges from the subtext of what our character struggles to learn and overcome during the story — i.e., how they can grow beyond that defining moment.

Great! But since this is all so important to the emotio...

How Can We Make Our Story’s Conflict Stronger?

Here's the latest from Jami Gold, Paranormal Author :

It’s time for another one of my guest posts over at Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi’s Writers Helping Writers site. As one of their Resident Writing Coaches, I’ve previously shared:

insights on how to approach an overwhelming revision how to increase the stakes (the consequences for failure) in our story 7 ways to indicate time passage in our stories (and 2 issues to watch out for) how to translate story beats to any genre how and why w...