WRITING
- Scene Structure: Opening Hooks, Live Write Thrive | Tweet
What is a hook all about anyway? It’s a line that snags your reader and pulls them into the story. Often someone flipping through your book or looking at the first page online at Amazon.com will just read the first few lines.
Dirty Fighting isn’t about some how-to guide on Jujitsu or Street Fighting. Nope, it’s actually a list of twenty-three items given to my husband and I by our pre-marital counselor to teach us the difference between the Dirty Fighting Techniques practiced by most couples and the clean-as-a-whistle fighting he wanted us to strive for.
- Why adverbs are the tequila of writing dialogue, Writers Write | Tweet
Adverbs tell us how something was done. You should rather try to show us how it was done. When I talk about adverbs I want you to be pay close attention to the words that end in –ly, namely adverbs of manner.
Related content:
How to write dazzling dialogue
- Writing Memorable Characters, via Finding Nemo, Writers Helping Writers | Tweet
Marlin is the hero of Finding Nemo because he has the most to overcome. He’s emotionally wounded by a traumatic event from the past—the death of his wife and almost all of his children. 
Related content:
Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint
- Seven Secret Ingredients of Classics, Books by Women | Tweet
There are some books that always feature in Top Ten lists, including mine. I never tire of reading Wuthering Heights, for example, or Jane Eyre, or Rebecca and at least once every few years I pick up one of the books I adored when I was younger, Little Women or Ballet Shoes or Black Beauty.
Related content:
- 12 Tips to avoid overwriting, Write on Sisters | Tweet
Overwriting is a common problem for new writers. Even experienced writers can fall victim to the issue. It’s something, as a reader, that drives me nuts. It’s also something I’m guilty of needing friendly reminders about in my own early drafts.
Related content:
How to evaluate your own writing
- Writing supporting characters that matter, Writer Unboxed | Tweet
Writing supporting characters that matter, 
Basically, the entirety of the internet’s wisdom on supporting characters can be broken down into a simple five-point checklist.
Related content:
+ Related books:
- How to write dazzling dialogue
- Writing success: Your book from start to finish to publication
- Outlining your novel
- Writing deep point of view
- The art of memoir
- Reading like a Writer
- Rock your revisions
- The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide To Character Expression
SCREENWRITING
- Writing and the creative life: The Magic of Ambient Noise, Go Into The Story | Tweet
70 decibels. Not 50 dBs. That’s too low. Not 85 dBs. That’s too high. Nope. 70 dBs of ambient noise appears to be just right when it comes to enhancing one’s creativity.
- How to approach writing a story with multiple main characters?, Go Into The Story | Tweet
Hyperlink movies are films following multiple story lines and multiple characters. These story lines and characters intersect obliquely and subtly.
- A free imagination has no limits and no budget range, Go into the story | Tweet
In moviemaking, there are those who may tell you otherwise. I just read a wonderful script by a workshop student. The writer fine tuned his characters well and honed great emotional payoffs.
- The premise, or what’s the point?, John August | Tweet
Michael Tabb takes a deep look at defining the premise of your story.
Story Structure: The four act structure, Script Mag | Tweet
We all know that movies don’t really contain “acts” per se. In live or “legitimate” theater the curtain will actually rise and fall at act breaks. The concept of the “act” in screenplays, however, exists only for the writer and is unseen by the audience.
Related books:
- Super Structure: The key to unleashing the power of story
- Screenplay: The foundations of screenwriting
- Essentials of screenwriting
- Screenwriting: The sequence approach
- 33 Ways to sell your screenplay
- The eight characters of comedy
SELF-PUBLISHING
- How to create titles to hook your readers, The Book Designer | Tweet
Are you sometimes stuck when it comes to adding a title to a blog or article? Have you ever used a mundane title for a blog, article, or gulp … your book?
Amazon Kindle crackdown on ebook quality, Just Publishing Advice | Tweet
Ebook authors and publishers who ignore quality issue warnings at the time of publishing on Kindle Direct Publishing now face the reality that readers will be warned that their ebooks are sub-standard.
- 5 Simple actions you can take if your book is not selling, Just Publishing Advice | Tweet
With nearly 5 million Kindle ebooks available, plus an even larger number of paperback and hardcover books listed on Amazon, it’s no wonder that your book can get lost in the crowd.
Writing Award-Winning Thrillers, Co-Writing And Going Hybrid With Rebecca Cantrell, The Creative Penn | Tweet
Rebecca Cantrell is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling and award-winning thriller and mystery author.
How to Connect on Twitter Without Selling Out Your Community, Writer’s Digest | Tweet
There is one thing about sites like Twitter (where this seems to be far more rampant) that can be particularly irksome, and that is the Direct Message sales pitch/demand.
Related books:
- Self Publishing: My rules to staying alive and making money
- How I sold 80,000 books
- Write. Publish. Repeat: The no-luck-required guide to self-publishing success
- Createspace & Kindle Self Publishing Masterclass
- The Self-Publishing Road Map