Jami Gold's Blog: Jami Gold, Paranormal Author, page 18

Choosing Just the Right Words — Guest: Kathy Steinemann

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While I’m recovering from my latest surgery this week, I’m grateful for another guest blog today. Kathy Steinemann is here to talk about word choice, but not in the way we usually think of the issue.

We often talk about word choice in reference to our voice, but choosing the right word can be complex. We need to consider our characters’ voices, which can conflict with our voice, and sometimes we might want to break grammar rules for the sa...

Writing Prompts: Helpful? Or a Waste of Time? — Guest: Savannah Cordova

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Before we get into today’s post, if you heard about my surgery last week, everything went well, but it will be months before we know if the experimental procedure worked or not, so I appreciate all your good wishes. And while I’m recovering, I’m extra grateful for today’s guest post as well. *grin*

Savannah Cordova is one of the writers with Reedsy. In addition to being a great resource site for writers—with helpful blog posts, classes, an...

The Pros and Cons of Experimenting

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We’ve talked before about the perspective of being flexible as writers. The processes and techniques that worked on our last story might not work on our next one, so it can be beneficial to fill our writing and editing toolbox with more options.

However at the same time, there are more risks and potential for problems when we try something new. We might not even know how to judge whether we’ve succeeded or not.

In other words, trying somet...

Worldbuilding a Series: Writing without a Plan

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Last week, we talked about worldbuilding and how one way to approach it is by figuring out our world’s History 101. As I mentioned in the post, some writers plan out their worldbuilding details in advance. Others…not so much. *smile*

I write by the seat of my pants, otherwise known as being a pantser. Pantsers can still successfully worldbuild, as we can simply pause and add worldbuilding details as we pay attention to our plot events and...

Worldbuilding: Your Story World’s History 101

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I’m still suffering from my super-cold-from-hell, and in response to the jokes that my previously mentioned spring cleaning caused me to get sick… Well, everyone in my family was sick too, and I was the last to succumb, but sure, I’m good with blaming cleaning regardless. *grin*

Anyway, between my illness which is still most keeping me offline and an emergency appointment with my surgeon yesterday, I wanted to keep this quick. *cough* But...

What Defines Our Story? Drive vs. Focus

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Ever feel like super-common writing advice doesn’t apply to your story? Or that feedback suggestions would make your story into something completely different? When that happens, we can experience self-doubt, wondering whether we’re doing this writing thing all “wrong.”

There are many reasons why not all advice will work for us or our story. Today we’re going to talk about one aspect of our story that can make the best-intentioned advice i...

Advice: For Writing or Beyond

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I’m going to keep this post short (no, really!) because I’m sick. Worse? Everyone in my family is sick, like pass-out-for-half-the-day sick. There’s no one left to take care of anyone, and we’re on our last orange juice. Fun!

Anyway, I’ve mentioned on social media that getting my new laptop prompted me to commit to a long-overdue spring cleaning. The project started innocently enough with organizing my computer’s files to move them over—bu...

Story Revisions: Keeping Track of Changes

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A couple of weeks ago, I shared some ideas about how we can stitch pieces of our story together after we make big revisions. As I mentioned, anytime we make a lot of changes to our story, we have to rip our story apart to fit in the new stuff, so we risk plot holes, missing transitions, uneven tones, etc.

My post introduced the Resident Writing Coach article I’d written for Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi’s Writers Helping Writers site,...

Productivity Secrets: Bullet Journals and Planning — Guest: L. Penelope

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I don’t know a single person who isn’t so busy that they struggle to get everything done. So I love hearing about different productivity methods and tips.

When I saw L. Penelope talking on Instagram about how she uses bullet journals to increase her productivity, I knew I had to bring her here. I’ve heard a lot about bullet journals for health and habits, but I loved her perspective of using them for planning our writing.

She highly recomm...

Creating Characters Who Clash — Guest: Angela Ackerman

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Last month, I shared news about the release of the new Character Builder resource available on Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi’s One Stop for Writers site. Most people know Angela and Becca through their Emotion Thesaurus book (and other Thesaurus books), as well as their Writers Helping Writers site, but I hope more people discover this awesome new Character Builder tool.

As I mentioned in that post last month, the Character Builder hel...