Jami Gold's Blog: Jami Gold, Paranormal Author, page 15

Finding Book Recommendations Beyond the Usual

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

A bit over a month ago, I posted about a quote I saw—”I ran out of books in my to-be-read pile”—and wondered how anyone could run out of stories to read. I shared how I’m constantly adding new books to my TBR pile (faster than I can read them, in fact *grin*) due to:

new releases from auto-buy authors backlist of enjoyable, new-to-me authors books on sale that sound interesting recommendations from friends and those whose opinion I respec...

Do We Know What We’re Capable Of?

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

I’m finally back (and mostly recovered) from my not-relaxing-at-all vacation. *grin* All my thanks to Angela Ackerman, Kassandra Lamb, and Lisa Bell for filling in for me while I was gone.

If you missed their posts, Angela shared 7 ways to keep our character descriptions active and meaningful. Kass shared her tips on when to use multiple points of view and how to do it right. And Lisa gave advice on 6 things we can focus on to keep our pea...

Story Tropes: Making Them Resonate

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

I’ll tell you about my vacation adventures next week, but today, I’m keeping my post short—both because I’m exhausted and because I slept so soundly after all my poor sleep during the trip that I pinched a nerve and can barely move my arm, making typing difficult. *shakes head*

Luckily, I returned to hear cute news that gave me an idea of what topic I could revisit and update today. Bindi Irwin, daughter of the late Steve Irwin, got engage...

Is Your Writing Plan Ready for a Crisis? — Guest: Lisa Bell

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

Life happens to us all. Sometimes the surprises of life are good, and sometimes they’re not so good. But that essential truth means that at some point in our writing career, we’ll struggle with figuring out how to write while life’s chaos happens around us.

I’m currently finishing up my exhausting vacation (because apparently I can’t do things halfway *sigh*), and to keep my blog going, I needed a plan for guest posters to fill in for me....

What’s the Right Way to Include Multiple POVs? — Guest: Kassandra Lamb

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

As a paranormal romance author, I’m used to writing with multiple points of view (POV), as all my stories feature both of the main characters. But that style of writing isn’t limited just to romance. In many genres, we can include multiple POVs to add depth, layers, insights, and opportunities to our stories.

That said, we also don’t want to use multiple POVs simply as a crutch to avoid head-hopping issues. Just because we want to share ho...

Character Descriptions: Avoiding the Boring Stuff — Guest: Angela Ackerman

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

I’m offline this week, but I have two phenomenal guest posters lined up for all of us. First, we have superstar Angela Ackerman here to talk about character descriptions today. Yay!

Whether we let our muse guide us, use character sheets, search for inspiration images, or explore the Character Builder resource available on Angela and Becca Puglisi’s One Stop for Writers site, we usually need to think about the physical appearance of our cha...

Can We Take a Break from Online? (& Blogiversary Winners!)

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

Yay! Tomorrow marks the official nine-year mark for my blog. *whew* I made it…even though the past few years made that milestone a bit questionable.

On my post announcing my annual Blogiversary Contest, we had enough comments to earn two winners. Woo hoo! But I always struggle with the part where random.org selects the winners because I wish I could give everyone a prize.

In fact, we ended up within rounding distance of having enough comme...

How Can We Build Our Writing Community?

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

We all come to the writing world through different paths, and our starting points encompass countless different experiences and backgrounds. That means we all discover the existence of the writing community in different ways as well.

Some of us might have Googled a question and discovered a helpful author’s blog. Or we might have encountered authors on social media or came across a flyer for a writing workshop. Or we might have noticed the...

Do Our Stories Need More Conflict?

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

Today is Independence Day in the U.S., the day the country’s fight for independence officially started. Appropriately, for today’s post, we’re talking about conflict…in our stories. *grin*

Conflict is one of those concepts that writers can sometimes struggle with, especially when we’re new to writing. So let’s make it easier to understand and include in our stories.

Outside of the writing world, conflict is usually considered a bad thing....

Story and Character Goals: Can There Be Too Many?

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

A few weeks ago, I shared my Resident Writing Coach guest post over at Writers Helping Writers and talked about how weak or passive goals in our story can hurt us. Then we dug more into weak goals—how they can sometimes help our story and how we can turn them active over the course of a story. Finally, we explored how goals (whether passive or active) work with a romance or multiple-protagonist story.

In the comments of that last post, Ann...