Jami Gold's Blog: Jami Gold, Paranormal Author, page 53

5 Common Myths about Emotions — Guest: Kassandra Lamb

We all have emotions, so we all think we know how to write them. However, one of those emotions we’ve probably all experienced is denial, and that means we might be in denial about some truths for how emotions really work.

Yet sometimes the best writing—the writing that will hit hardest and feel deepest and truest to readers—comes from exposing an emotional truth that we’ve hidden from ourselves. When that happens, the story helps readers feel like they understand themselves better too.

(As...

Self-Publishing? What’s Your Release Plan?

It’s time once again for my monthly guest post over at Janice Hardy’s Fiction University. We’ve been walking through the process of making choices for what path we want for our indie publishing career.

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

We started off talkingabout knowing our goals.There’s no end to the conflicting advice o...

5 Tips for Finding Point-of-View Errors — Guest: Marcy Kennedy

As we learn writing craft, we often go through various phases of learning. First we might need to learn about story structure, and then once we have that down, we might focus on developing three-dimensional characters.

Or we might start off with needing to learn grammar and those pesky comma rules. Then once we’ve reached the expert level on that, we might need to pay attention to livening up our settings and descriptions.

In short, learning the craft of writing is an ongoing project. Just w...

Release News! Do Your Plans Succeed?

Yesterday marked the release of my fourth book, Ironclad Devotion, and I think I’m going to collapse now. From 0 to 4 books published this year. *whew*

I couldn’t have done it without the support and cheering from everyone. The warm fuzzies were abundant yesterday, so excuse me a minute while I hug you all. *squishes you silly*

This release marks the end of my “master plan,” also known as my daisy-chain release schedule. I first came up with that plan about a year ago, as I had four stories...

Digging into Research: Consider the Source

Last week, we talked about how we can add diversity to our stories in a respectful way. Several of the comments brought up fantastic points, and some included helpful resources and links.

Obviously, the most helpful thing we can do to support diversity within the publishing industry is to buy and help promote books from diverse authors. As I mentioned last time, there might be some stories that aren’t ours to tell, so we also need to encourage the success of those authors who can tell those...

Writing Diversity: How Can We Avoid Issues?

The real world is filled with diversity, and I’ve often said that our stories should be the same way. That’s not an agenda, just a truth.

Even within our own culture (whatever that is), we’re likely to find diversity simply because we all have different experiences and backgrounds. Some will be poor, and some will come from a broken home. Some will be educated, and some will be religious. Some will struggle with disabilities, and some will identify with a non-default gender or sexual orienta...

What’s Your Long-Term Plan?

Back when we first started on our writing journey, we might have been writing for ourselves. Maybe we had a cool idea we wanted to capture. Maybe we wanted to see if we could actually write a story. Or maybe we wanted to give the voices in our head a place to live and gro. (That last one applies to me. *smile*)

But for many of us, we expanded our goals somewhere along the line. Instead of writing only for us, we now have additional purposes in mind.

As soon as we look beyond ourselves and th...

Formatting for eBooks: Tips and Pitfalls — Guest: Angela Quarles

Long before I decided to indie publish, I began keeping the option in the back of my mind. I read articles about self-publishing, I learned the steps of the process, and I started bookmarkingcover artistsandeditorsas I came across recommendations.I even audited an ebook formatting class and attended a workshop on ebook formatting at a conference.

With those latter classes, I didn’treallyfeel like learning all the technical stuff involved, so I was mostly hoping to get an idea for how to tell...

Writing Tools: Killer Resources for Drafting Our Story — Guest: Angela Ackerman

I’m beyond excited for today’s guest post. I started visiting the original The Bookshelf Muse website by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi soon after they started it, and it’s been fantastic to see their vision grow.

It’s no secret that I love theirThe Emotion Thesaurus book.I’ve talked about how the final piece I needed to push my writing to the level needed to win contests was creating an emotional connection in my stories—and it was due to what I learned from the ET that I reached that le...

Developing Our Story: From Beat Sheet to Scene List

My regular readers know that I’m a pantser, writing by the seat of my pants. However, it wasn’t always that way.

Although the first story I wrote (a never-to-be-shared Harry Potter fanfic) was written spur-of-the-moment with no planning, myfirst attempt at an original novel involved lots of plotting in advance. I thought that’s what serious authors did.

Through that experience, I learned that plotting out details kills a story for me. I enjoy the drafting phase more if I’m discovering the st...