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Prescriptions: Listen To Me! The Black Moment Week 3

By on September 27, 2007 in Uncategorized

Welcome back! I hope you and your character and still talking to each other, now that you know his deepest fears, greatest dreams, and know how to hurt him! Because today, we’re going to talk about how to put all that knowledge together to create THE BLACK MOMENT. What is The Black Moment? The Black Moment is that place in the book where everything hits a crisis – both internally and externally. It’s the point of change in a book and can be the most powerful scene if done right. How do we find that black Moment for your Character? It’s easy…and Hint #3: Find their hiding place. Where do you derive your security? Hopefully, for all of us, it’s in the strength of God and trusting in His love […]

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Self Therapy: Simplify and Focus!

By on September 26, 2007 in Loosen Up!

Why can’t readers just be inside my brain? That’s the problem, isn’t it? Trying to help the reader grasp a scene without giving them too little information, or also overwhelming them. So often, I have my cast of characters, and I want to throw everybody into the first scene, treating them as old friends (which they are to me), without remembering that my reader hasn’t met them yet. Here’s a scene of my recent book, Reclaiming Nick. I wanted to portray Nick as the hero he is…but with all the players in the scene, it became clunky, and hard for the reader to follow. Let’s take a look. (My comments are in italics) *** When the lanky form of Saul Lovell walked into the Watering Hole Café, dragging with him […]

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Ask the Doc: Raising Tension by creating Peripheral Stakes

By on September 25, 2007 in Uncategorized

My bad — as I was getting into my cab yesterday on my way home from Dallas, I hollered at my Book Therapy cohort, Rachel, to blog about Dr. Notes, forgetting that Tuesday was Drs. Notes day– and yesterday was Ask the Doc — so, sorry for that switcharoo! I taught four workshops at last weeks American Christian Fiction Writer’s conference, and then spent all day Sunday brainstorming with my crit partners. One of the most common questions that surfaced had to do with keeping tension tight on every page. Someone said, “I have a main plot, with lots of tension, but the story seems to slow in the middle to almost a standstill. How do I keep that tension increasing on each page? Great question. And one solution: Create […]

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Doctor’s Notes – What I learned at the ACFW Conference

By on September 24, 2007 in Uncategorized

Sorry I’m posting so late, but I’m just home from Dallas and the ACFW conference. So, here are a few Doctor’s Notes! Branding. How do we brand? What is a brand? First, let me say for new authors, unpublished or published, branding is not something you need to worry about right away. Certainly look for your unique voice, story, way of writing, but I don’t recommend spending a lot of time trying to come up with some tag line. The best brand is the author’s name. What do you think of when I say John Grisham or Nora Roberts? Right. A brand is something that helps the publisher, retailers and readers describe your work. A summation that fits nice in a sales pitch. Usually a brand is said in ten […]

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