Tuesday Two-Minute Writing Tip – Sharing Other Blog Posts: Creating Villains and Emotional Arcs

Got two minutes? Then check out this week’s quick tip ~ Two excellent posts from other bloggers

Hello and welcome…I am a freelance editor and an editor for The Wild Rose Press, as well as an author. I often struggle with my own writing, and I have found that sometimes, a little reminder of ways to improve the process can be helpful, so, I like to share these moments of brilliance with others :). But, in this busy world of ours, who has time for pages and pages of writing tips? That’s why I’ve condensed mine down to quick flashes you can read in (approximately) two minutes. Enjoy…

Disclaimer: All of my tips are suggestions, and are only my opinion. And, for the most part, there are exceptions when going against my advice will make your story read better. Take what works, leave the rest.

Over the past few days, I’ve read two blog posts that contained fantastic information, so I thought I would share them. They came at a perfect time for me since I am in the beginning stages of writing my suspense/thriller novel.

Blog 1:

This first post is about villains. In a suspense, your villains are almost as important, if not just as important, as your protagonist. After I read this article, I realized that part of my difficulty in getting my latest story out of the starting gate was that I did not have a clear picture of the villain, nor was he, or she, very interesting or well-developed. Now that I read this article, my Big V is starting to become deliciously and dastardly real:

8 Things I Learned about Villains by Emily Wenstrom

Blog 2:

Emotion in a story is oftentimes a bit tricky and elusive. It’s not important to infuse high, dramatic emotion in each scene, but in order to keep your readers interested and ‘on their toes,’ it is helpful to tweak the emotion/expectation in as many scenes as possible. After reading the below post, I decided to keep this in mind as I’m drafting my latest WIP and see where I can add arcs to increase pacing.

How to Create Awesome Scene Arcs that Surprise Readers by K.M. Weiland

What do you think? Will these tips be helpful to you? I know that I’m definitely looking forward to the opportunity to apply them. Now, if I can just carve out some writing time. 🙂

Until next time…happy writing!

*** If you would like to send me a few sample pages (around 7500 words or so, even though I will not edit that many on the blog. It just gives me more to choose from) for me to edit and share on an upcoming blog post, please do so in the body of an email to AliciaMDean@aol.com. Please use the subject line: “Blog Submission” This is for published or unpublished authors. In the email, please include whether you would like me to use your name or keep it anonymous, and whether or not you would like me to include any contact info or buy info for your books. Also, you can let me know if you would like for me to run my edits by you before posting on the blog. Please keep in mind, this is for samples to use for blog posts. I will not edit or use samples from all the submissions I receive, but I will use as many as possible. 

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*** Find the Magic and the book I use for examples in FTM, Without Mercy, are both on sale for 1.50 each. Click HERE for Find the Magic and HERE for Without Mercy ***

How to write a novel? That is the question. There are probably as many answers to that question as there are people who ask it.

Wanting to write and actually doing it are two very different things. I am well acquainted with the sometimes grueling process of churning out a story. Over the years, I have tried many methods for creating and completing manuscripts, and have tweaked and honed it down to a workable (for me) process.

Using specific examples from one of my own novels, Without Mercy, I share my method in this mini how to book. The first eight steps actually deal with plotting while the last two are designed to help expand your outline into a well-developed draft. There is no one, perfect way to create a story, but there will be a method, or methods that work for you. I’m not sure if this is the one, but it works for me. Only you can decide if it also works for you. Fingers crossed that it does!

*** Warning – Please do not purchase without reading a sample. (This is solid advice for any book, fiction or non. If you are not intrigued in the sample, you will likely not enjoy the book)

Amazon: Click Here