Lisa Hall-Wilson's Blog, page 10

7 Ways To Be A Confident Writer Even If You’re Not A Bestseller

Artists of all stripes seem riddled with self-doubt. Part of that is because we so closely identify with our work that a rejection of our work is felt as a personal rejection. Learning to be a confident writer, not even all of the time but at least some of the time, requires a shift in how we think of ourselves and our work.

Your Confidence Doesn’t Have To Correlate With “Success”

Being confident in your ability to write doesn’t have to directly correlate to financial success. Confidence is...

4 Ways Writers Cheat Reality With Internal Dialogue To Write Better Fiction

Emotion In Internal Dialogue

Internal dialogue is the power horse of deep point of view. Because this style of writing is personal and intimate, the things we tell ourselves, our internal observations, opinions and biases makes up a significant part of the conflict in the story. Internal dialogue is often the vehicle through which setting, subtext, and often the emotional punch are delivered. There are a lot of things we think privately we’d never want to be known more widely, yet that’s whe...

5 Deep Point of View Errors Every Writer Makes

Shifting Your Story Into Deep Point Of View Often Isn’t Intuitive!

Deep point of view is a stylistic choice writers can use throughout an entire novel or to add emotional punch to important scenes, but it isn’t an intuitive technique for many. It’s not difficult, don’t misunderstand me, but this technique requires a shift in how you capture the story for your readers.

With this technique, readers aren’t looking for an objective reporting of what’s going on, they want to be IN THE ACTION. Of...

What If Your Antagonist Isn’t Human – What’s The Secret Sauce Then?

In my last post, I looked at the secret sauce you need to make antagonists menacing. Today I want to go beyond basics with non-human antagonists. In school, we all likely learned the different types of conflict in literature:

human vs human (very common, no examples needed)
human vs himself (Hamlet, The Tell-Tale Heart, A Walk To Remember)
human vs nature (Lost in the Barrens, The Perfect Storm)
human vs supernatural (anything with vampires, werewolves, witches, demons, zombies, etc.)
human...

The Secret Sauce For A Menacing Antagonist

The two most important characters in your story are your protagonist and your antagonist. They both must be equally developed and dynamic. After all, no one looks heroic, brave, or is worth cheering for if they don’t break a sweat—if everything comes easily to them. How annoying is that! We cheer for the underdog, the weakling facing the school bully, those who put everything on the line knowing their chances of winning are slim or impossible.

This is the beyond basics blog, so let’s look at...

Beyond Racing Hearts and Sweaty Palms: Writing the Body Language of Attraction

With deep point of view, being able to show readers how and why your character is or isn’t attracted to another without naming an emotion or using on-the-nose dialogue can be a really important detail to get right.

There are at least four types of attraction (sexual attraction being just one option) and showing your character experiencing a wider range of traits they’re attracted to helps readers care more.

Remember, when writing in deep point of view, the writer’s job is to present evidence...

Create Layers of Tension With Subtext To Surprise Readers

What Is Subtext And Why It’ll Make Your Writing Next Level

Subtext is the unspoken communication that takes place between characters in a story. It usually takes place when there’s disparity between what a character says, thinks, and feels. It’s also used effectively when the point of view character shares knowledge or an experience with another character, but no one else in the room or conversation is aware of it.

Non-verbal communication can include movements (ie. hand gestures), voice ton...

Can You Make A Living Writing?

Can you make a living writing? This is a question that came through to the blog last week. My short answer was yes – of course, but I’ve spent some time doing a completely unscientific anecdotal poll of the various writer’s groups I’m a part of so that I can answer this question outside of my own personal experience.

Freelancing, as a rule, is feast or famine. It’s unpredictable income. Of all the freelance work I’ve done, writing for non-profits was the most predictable, but only until dona...

5 Quick Hacks To Gear Up Your Setting and Description Into Deep Point Of View

One aspect of writing in Deep Point Of View (POV) that’s often overlooked or downplayed is the importance of filtering setting and description through your point of view character (POVC). Remember, in Deep POV you want to avoid drawing conclusions for readers. Don’t tell readers what to think, give them your POVCs raw data and let readers come to their own verdict about how the POVC feels, what they’re observing, and the world they live in. This puts the reader IN the story and keeps them ou...

Should You Write For Genre (and monetary success)?

Should you write for genre (and tied up in that is the expectation that genre fiction sells better than literary fiction so you’ll find more monetary success)? I don’t think writing to genre is bad nor do I think avoiding all discussion of genre wise either. You can write the best book in the world, but if don’t know how to sell it, if readers can’t find it – then what?

So, the core of this argument is – should you write to genre (staying within the creative limits set out by reader expectat...