On Writing – Page 6 – Liana Brooks

Archive by category "On Writing" (Page 6)

Plotting Beat Sheet

Plotting Session 1: Structure Plotting Session 2: Beat Sheets Plotting Session 3: The Epic Plotting Video During the epic plotting video where Amy Laurens and I fixed her Very Broken Novel™ I showed you the beat sheet I made Amy fill out before we replotted her book. This isn’t a…

Plotting with Amy Laurens and Liana Brooks – Part 3 The Plot Session

FROM LIANA: Grab some popcorn, a really big glass of water, and something to take notes with. This is not a quick plotting session, mostly because this was Amy’s original NaNo novel and a lot of scenes existed just to make word count. There were beats missing, motivations missing, villains…

Plotting with Amy Laurens and Liana Brooks – Part 2 Beat Sheets

FROM LIANA: The instinct of a new writer is push back against the tried-and-true, and this is especially true with beats. I think there’s something hardwired into new authors that makes us want to try and break a genre by doing something new and radical. What we forget (or don’t…

Plotting With Amy Laurens & Liana Brooks – Part 1

FROM LIANA: Back at the end of September I dropped off the grid for a week and was posting pictures of this other person, that was because Amy flew from Australia to Alaska to visit me. We’re basically twins, except we don’t share parents, genes, nationality, or birthdays… but we…

The Gift of Failure

Originally published on Savvy Authors in 2015. Back when I had just started writing with the intent to publish, around 2006, I printed out a copy of my very first novel and shared it with a friend who had a good taste for books. She was the kind of friend…

Write Opening Chapters That Get Read #LianaEdits

On Twitter I’m making general editing notes under the hashtag #LianaEdits so I can point out errors I see repeated over multiple books (sometimes even in published books – yikes!) One of the most common problems I see are opening chapters that don’t get the story started. Opening chapters cannot…

Find Balance (a repost from 2009)

When someone says the word ‘balance’ we tend to think of checkbooks or standing on one foot. It doesn’t conjure up an immediate image of writing, probably because writers usually say “pace” or “plot element” and the word balance doesn’t enter into the equation. I want to change that today…

There Is No Muse. Sit Down And Write.

I’ll be honest, I’ll believe in fairies before I will in muses. I may have had a muse, back when I was in fourth grade or so, and then I locked it down in the dungeon chained to a wall and let it die. It’s skeleton is right next to…

Take a Nap!

You know me, any excuse for a few minutes of peace and quiet is a good one. Sleep researchers have been working for years to explain the benefits of napping. Does this scenario sound familiar… You’ve been at the computer for three hours straight. Between checking e-mail, balancing the checkbook,…

Good Writing Advice For Any Day (a repost from 2010)

Every now and then (about chapter 15 of every novel) I get bogged down in the details. Somehow I become physically unable to let any minute of my character’s life go unaccounted. I become a secret stalker documenting their every move. FMC woke up, took three steps, found her purple…