Category: Learnings
-
Goal: Improving my Book Openings
New year, new retrospective on my strengths and weaknesses as a writer! In 2024, I made progress with plot, character arcs and incorporating themes into them. I learnt to dial up the environment and characters, and how to merge scenes so that they serve multiple purposes. I focussed on the climactic sequence and the resolution,…
-
How much choreography is too much?
In my recent post about unlearning fanfic-writing habits, I said that over-choreographing is the one I find most difficult to shake. Hopefully writing about over-choreographing will help me to do that. What do I mean by choreography? Choreography in books is not bad. In fact, it’s generally a good thing. This is where everything happens.…
-
2023 Writing Retrospective
It’s no secret that I love a good ol’ retrospective. Both in a team and as a solo event, retros are a useful tool for framing the past iteration of a project/goal and working out what you need to do next. I’ve experimented with weird and wonderful retro formats in the past, but today I’m…
-
Unlearning Fanfiction Crutches and Habits
Before I get into this post about bad habits I’ve been unlearning from my fanfic-writing days, a note to say: I love fanfiction. Totting up the ones with the biggest word-counts that I remember off the top of my head, I’ve written over a million words of fanfic, and read over fifteen million. This is…
-
Making the Most of Beta Readers
Some of the most common questions asked in writing groups and reddit subs involve beta readers: how to find them; how to know if they’re any good; what to do when you don’t agree with the feedback; dealing with rude feedback or radio silence. A year ago I was one of those people asking questions.…
Non Hughes 