Category: writing tips

Writing, Writing Resources, writing tips

Merry Christmas and Happy Writing with Helpful Links

Mona Alvarado Frazier
Joy Noel

 

It’s almost tamale making time so I’ll be deep into making various traditional and vegan tamales with the family. But before that happens, I wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas. I hope you are enjoying your time with your loved ones and continuing or making new traditions.

The time between Christmas Day and New Years Day is a perfect time to read a new book, journal, or decide your writing goals for the new year.

I’ve collected a few posts on writing that I hope you find helpful:

  1. Maria Popova of Brain Pickings: The Collected Wisdom of Great Writers. 
  2. Anne R. Allen’s Blog: Author’s Alphabet of Useful Resources.
  3. Poets and Writers Magazine: 484 Small Presses Seeking Manuscripts.
  4. Brian Hutchinson of Positive Writer: You Are Good Enough.
  5. Debbie Ridpath Ohi of Inky Writer, Guide for Kidlit/YA Writers also shares comics on writing:
A Writers Christmas Wish. Debbie Ridpath Ohi comics

6. Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi of Writers Helping Writers. Great thesauruses of settings and emotions.

7. K.M. Weiland of Helping Writers Become Authors offers advice on writing craft.

I’ll leave you with her “Writers Manifesto.”

A Writers Manifesto

Happy times with your family and friends. Be well.

Creative Writing, Writers, Writing, writing tips

How To Unleash the Power of Setting In Your Writing

Mona Alvarado Frazier

I’m all about trying to improve my writing skills. The stacks of books, both virtual and physical, take up more than one shelf of my bookcase and four bookshelves in Kindle Fire. So, it is with great expectation that the new Urban and Rural Settings Thesaurus (I wonder if it’s ‘thesauri’) are now available.

As we storytellers sit before the keyboard to craft our magic, we’re usually laser-focused on the two titans of fiction: plot and character. Yet, there’s a third element that impacts almost every aspect of the tale, one we really need to home in on as well: the setting.

How would you describe this place to someone who’s never been here?

village in Italy, photo by Lou Levit,
Italy, photo by Lou Levit, unsplash.com, cc

The setting is so much more than a painted backdrop, more than a stage for our characters to tromp across during the scene. Used to its full advantage, the setting can characterize the story’s cast, supply mood, steer the plot, provide challenges and conflict, trigger emotions, help us deliver those necessary snippets of backstory…and that’s just scratching the surface. So the question is this: how do we unleash the full power of the setting within our stories?

Well, there’s some good news on that front. Two new books have released this week that may change the description game for writers. The Urban Setting Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to City Spaces and The Rural Setting Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Personal and Natural Spaces look at the sights, smells, tastes, textures, and sounds a character might experience within 225 different contemporary settings. And this is only the start of what these books offer writers.

In fact, swing by and check out this hidden entry from the Rural Setting Thesaurus: Ancient Ruins.

And there’s one more thing you might want to know more about….

Rock_The_Vault_WHW1Becca and Angela, authors of The Emotion Thesaurus, are celebrating their double release with a fun event going on from June 13-20th called ROCK THE VAULT. At the heart of the Writers Helping Writers site is a tremendous vault, and these two ladies have been hoarding prizes of epic writerly proportions.

A safe full of prizes, ripe for the taking…if the writing community can work together to unlock it, of course.

Ready to do your part? Stop by Writers Helping Writers to find out more!
Don’t miss out on some fantastic prizes.