Zoe M. McCarthy's Blog, page 7
June 6, 2019
A Powerful Visual Image in Your Story
Tailor Your Fiction Manuscript in 30 Days is designed to shape a not-yet submitted, rejected, or self-published manuscript with low ratings into a book that shines. The method can also be a guiding resource for writers starting a manuscript. See details below. In a writers conference workshop, Zena Dell Lowe, a conference speaker, college professor, […]
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May 30, 2019
Test Your Use of Hyphens in Your Stories
Tailor Your Fiction Manuscript in 30 Days is now available. See details below. I decided to stop winging my use of hyphens and arm myself with some rules. A Hyphen-Usage Test Which four of these examples are incorrect? At the end of the test, see the analysis of why each example is correct or incorrect. […]
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May 23, 2019
Does Your Scene’s Pace Match Its Mood?
Tailor Your Fiction Manuscript in 30 Days is now available. See details below. Possible Scene Moods sorrowful lazy (might come as a break after a particularly harsh scene) fearful humorous (could be part of a light genre or provide a rest after a scary scene) suspenseful For pace, focus on: actions sentence length (whether fast- […]
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May 16, 2019
Power Up Your Paragraphs – It’s Fun
Tailor Your Fiction Manuscript in 30 Days is now available. See details below. The Exercise Pick a paragraph from your first draft or even from a book. Circle the nouns, verbs, adjective, and adverbs. Circle them. Then use your imagination, thesaurus, or Flip Dictionary by Barbara Ann Kipfer. Ph.D. and see if you can replace each circled […]
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May 9, 2019
One Important Reason to Limit Clichés in Your Stories
Tailor Your Fiction Manuscript in 30 Days is now available. See details below. Many clichés were catchy or meaningful when they were first penned. That’s the reason they became overused. Before I give you a good reason to limit clichés, I invite you to read the following paragraphs. Example Greg was always at a loss […]
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May 2, 2019
Having Trouble Staying Inside Your Character’s Point of View?
Tailor Your Fiction Manuscript in 30 Days is now available. See details below. The Problem Staying inside your point-of-view character (POVC) is important. Then your readers will experience being inside your character as well. You want readers to see what he sees, feel what he feels, know what he knows, and move with him as […]
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April 25, 2019
Characters Should Say and Do Only Things That Have Purpose.
Tailor Your Fiction Manuscript in 30 Days is now available. See details below. Writers may think characters should talk and act like real people. If a movie showed actors doing that, the theater would soon be empty. That’s why films cut to the important dialogue and actions. It’s the same with novels. Purposeful dialogue, inner […]
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April 18, 2019
Mixed Metaphors – Don’t Let Them Sneak into Stories
Tailor Your Fiction Manuscript in 30 Days is now available. See details below. What a Mixed Metaphor Is A mixed metaphor is one that combines different images or ideas in a way that is confusing or absurd. The images don’t work well with each other. Yes, I wrote the following mixed metaphor (sigh), and my […]
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April 11, 2019
Stories Grab and Germinate Inside a Writer – A Writer’s Journey
Tailor Your Fiction Manuscript in 30 Days is now available. See details below. Ordinary World I’ve happily written inspirational contemporary romances. I center my blog posts on the writing craft, and I have a nonfiction out on writing. Call to Adventure Inciting Incident: Early one morning, I woke and a story plot came to me. […]
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April 4, 2019
Cut Useless Scenes
My guest today is Sara L. Foust. Sara will tell us how to recognize scenes that need to be cut. More about her new book, Rarity Mountain, follows her post. Sara: How do you know if you should include the scene you’ve just written or—gasp—cut it? First, let’s define what a scene is. Definitions of a Scene Google’s dictionary defines […]
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