Jami Gold's Blog: Jami Gold, Paranormal Author, page 16

9th Annual Blogiversary Contest — Prize: Me! Wait…er, What?

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It’s that time of year again. My nine-year blogiversary is coming up on July 12th. Holy cow. Nine years? Really?

I think it’s now official that I’ve been blogging for forever. Or maybe after the past few years’ never-ending health issues, it just feels that way. *smile*

Once again, I’m amazed I found that much to blog about, not just in the number of posts (over 900!) but the length of my posts. I can’t begin to count the number of times I...

What Does “Plot Reveals Character” Mean?

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As we’ve talked about before, some stories feature more of a plot, and some feature more about characters. Other stories mix-and-match those elements, such as being plot-driven but character-focused.

No matter what we write, however, the point of our stories usually rests more on our characters than our plots. In fact, we might have heard that the purpose of the plot is to reveal character.

For some, that might be a controversial statement...

Can We Run Out of Stories to Read?

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Is it possible to run out of stories to read? *smile*

We’ll get to that question in a minute, but first I’m asking for your help…

Those of you who have been following me or my blog for a while might have seen me talk about some of my health issues over the past few years. I’ve struggled with everything from an antibiotic-resistant bone infection that disintegrated part of my jaw to an intestinal infection that turned every bit of food I at...

Conflicts and Goals: How Do They Work in Romance?

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Last week, 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.

The concept of goals gets even more complicated if we’re talking about stories with multiple protagonists. As a romance author, I’m going to explore this...

Can Passive Goals Ever Be Good for Our Story?

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Last time, 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. The comments over at WHW brought up some great issues and questions that I want to dig into more here.

As we’ve been discussing in the comments of my guest post, our characters often start with passive internal goals. They don’t want to change—and they often don’t think they need to c...

Writer’s Block? Focus on Stronger Story Goals

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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...

How Can We Make Sense of Our Goals and Priorities?

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We’ve talked a lot here about knowing out what our goals are. 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.

The whole process comes with added complications if we pressure ourselves with lots of “if we’re X, we should do Y.” We can fill in that X with anything from “a serious writer” to “a good spouse/parent,” etc.

Between what we see others priori...

Story Planning: Leaving Our Options Open

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Hang around writers long enough, and we’re bound to hear grumblings from the plotter vs. pantser divide. (Pantsers are those who write by the seat of their pants.) In the endless debate, some claim there’s a “right” way and a “wrong” way to draft our story.

Some act like plotters are the only “professional” way to write…even though plenty of famous authors don’t plot their stories in advance. Others act like pantsers are the only writers w...

The Importance of Balance in Our Lives

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Finding a good work-life balance is tricky for just about everyone. That often goes double for writers, as our writing can fall into its own category that’s not quite work…and not quite personal.

Unless we’re writing full-time and treating it as a full-time job, we might think our writing doesn’t “count” as work—especially if we’re not earning decent money from our writing. Yet if we want to treat writing as more than a hobby, we likely do...

Stop and Smell the Sense of Accomplishment

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At certain points in our life, we get lots of encouragement and feedback to create a sense of accomplishment. At other points, we have to create that sense ourselves.

This time of year, we’re surrounded by reminders that some have been able to check things off on the to-do list of life. Millions of students are graduating this spring in a celebration of completing one step and preparing for the next. Whether they’re graduating from kinderg...