Jami Gold's Blog: Jami Gold, Paranormal Author, page 47

5 Tips for Empowering Description with Contrast — Guest: Marcy Kennedy

We’ve probably all heard (or thought!) that description is boring. The part readers skip.

There’s no question that description has a bad reputation. Yet if we’ve ever read a story without enough description and been lost at what was happening or who was doing what, we know that description is essential to clearly showing events in our story to readers.

When I first started writing, I struggled with description, mostly by including way too much of it. Pages and pages. *smile*

I eventually lea...

4 Tips for “Setting” a Mood — Guest: Becca Puglisi

The Thesaurus books by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi are a must-have for every fiction author. I’ve raved many times about the awesomeness of theirEmotion Thesaurus and how we can use it to improve our writing.

We’ve also had Becca here before to talk about their Positive Trait Thesaurus and the Negative Trait Thesaurus. During her last visit, Becca shared seven tips for using the Trait Thesauri.

Now, I’m excited to announce that Angela and Becca have created two new Thesauri books: Urba...

10 Tips for Making Tumblr Work for Writers — Guest: Davonne Burns

As writers, we’re always struggling to find enough time for writing, editing, marketing (not to mention needing time for life in general). So whenever we hear about a social media site that we’re not on yet, we’re likely to say, “Not another one!” *smile*

But the truth is that every social media platform is different. They each attract a different user base and have different strengths and weaknesses.

Some help us form connections with other writers, and some help us connect with readers. So...

Are You Ready to Be an Entrepreneur? — Guest: Renee Regent

For the next two weeks, I’ll (hopefully) be able to survive my various health issues and enjoy a vacation. Wish me luck. *smile*

In the meantime, I have a couple of regular guest posters along with a couple of new guestposters stopping by to fill in for me. I hope you’ll all help them feel welcome while I’m internet-less in the middle of nowhere. *tries not to panic*

One common complaint about being a modern writer is that we’re expected to do so much that we struggle to find time to write....

Self Publishing? What’s Your Plan to Keep Readers? — Part Four

It’s time once again for my monthly guest post over at Janice Hardy’s Fiction University. We’ve been exploring the choices for what path we want to follow in our indie publishing career, and today, we’re digging even deeper into how to walk our chosen path.

My series about Indie Publishing Paths at Fiction University has highlighted some of the choices we have to make and given us a few guidelines for figuring out how to make the best decisions for us.

We started off talkingabout knowing our...

Can We Track Our Improvements in Writing Quality?

I’ve written many times about the long learning curve we face when we decide to become a writer. The journey is always longer than we think because we don’t know what all we don’t know.

I’ve also talked about how it’s hard to label any particular writing skill as beginner or advanced, because we all have different backgrounds, strengths and weaknesses, and learn skills in different orders. Just because we learn a skill later on in our learning curve doesn’t make it advanced.

So how can we tr...

Character Development Is a Two-Edged Sword

Within the writing community, there are just as many articles (if not more) about developing great characters as there are about creating interesting plots. We see blog posts debating how likable a character needs to be to interest a reader, other posts sharing techniques for evoking reader empathy, and still other posts instructing us on methods for showing a character’s emotional arc, etc., etc.

We know as readers that even the best-plotted book will suffer if the protagonist isn’t at leas...

What to Look for in Published-Author Contests

So… Remember how I mentioned last week that my book Treasured Claim was a double finalist in two contests? Let’s add two more finals to that list. *boggles*

I received a call—an actual phone call!—from…someone? (I was too flabbergasted to catch the name) with RWA‘s huge Fantasy, Futuristic, and Paranormal chapter (also known fondly as FF&P). She told me—along with some other things that promptly fell out of my overwhelmed brain—that Treasured Claim is a double finalist in the Fantasy and Bes...

What’s Your Validation?

Writers are often a neurotic, self-doubting lot. We doubt whether we’re telling the right story, whether we can do our idea justice, whether that sentence needs a comma or not. *smile*

That doubting continues over our writing journey, and many of us hope for validation as a means of overcoming that doubt. We hope to get an agent or a traditional publisher. We hope to win contests. And we hope for lots of readers, sales, and good reviews.

Of course, we never want to think about how that valid...

Plot Obstacles & Character Agency

I’ve said many times that I love when my readers ask questions in the comments. Questions here or on social media often make for fantastic post ideas, and they save me from having to think of a topic. *smile*

Today, we have a question from Ashley that gets at the heart of strong, proactive characters, especially in how that applies to literary fiction rather than genre fiction.

In the comments ofmy last post about plot obstacles and how to make sure our obstacles aren’t too easy or too hard,...