A passion of Pen Dames is to help other writers by sharing tips and insights we have learned along the way. We hope you will find the pointers beneficial to your writing process.
Katherine Eddinger Smits
Don't Let Structuring Your Novel Stress You Out!
Structuring your novel can feel overwhelming with so many models to choose from: the Three Act Structure, Freytag’s Pyramid, the Hero’s Journey, Save the Cat, and more. But this simple approach can make it easier.
Start by pinpointing three critical moments in your story:
1. The Inciting Incident: Where does your story truly begin? This is the event that sets your protagonist on their journey.
2. The Climax: How does the main problem resolve? This is the peak of your story, where the tension reaches its highest point.
3. The Midpoint Reversal: What is the turning point? This is the moment in the middle when everything changes, shifting the direction of the story.
Once you have a clear vision of these key scenes, you can flesh out your outline. However, if you’re more of a pantser, you can write your way towards these moments, letting the story develop organically.
By focusing on these pivotal scenes, you’ll make the process manageable while you build a solid foundation that will let you set your imagination free to create your best story!
Barbara Cairns
When I broke my hip in Africa, it was a shock, of course, to my system. Thoughts about everything that lie ahead of me would be too overwhelming, so I chose to take one moment, one hour, one day at a time and focused on the people and places surrounding me instead.
This something I need to practice more in my writing as well. Getting upset over problems with my website, what to do about a reversal of rights when my publisher closed down, or whether or not to try other traditional publishers or perhaps self publish my next book could become overwhelming if I allowed it.
So, I've decided not to dwell on those negatives. Instead, I've signed up for some online courses on travel writing and perhaps, I'll focus on an article or a future memoir in the days ahead.
My writing tip: Don't let yourself get overwhelmed with deadlines, writer's block, word count, or whatever else is nagging at you. Take a mental health day and just focus on YOU.
Jennifer Taylor
Spend oodles of time developing your hero and heroine's personalities. Make sure you create plenty of conflict between them. Opposites do attract. Spend a lot of time thinking about their past, which motivates them and creates conflict. Go into great detail about their likes and dislikes, down to food and sports, games, and everything in between. For example, what if a hero, on the first date, makes an elaborate meal, not knowing the heroine has an allergy? Maybe she gets angry because she thought he told her. Maybe he saves the day by taking her to the hospital.
That's just a simple example, but let's face it: readers love it when sparks fly, and wait in suspense to see if the h/h can resolve their conflicts and roadblocks.
Most of all, have fun with your characters, those other voices living in your head!
Flossie Benton Rogers
Writing tool- Timeline Calendar!
A handy tool is a calendar with the days of the week listed across the top, each hour of the day listed vertically on the left, and the remainder of the page filled with blank squares for jotting brief notes. Blank downloadable calendars can be found with a quick online search, you can photocopy a page from a physical calendar, or you can create your own calendar with Word, Excel, etc. It’s your preference whether to use print or electronic format.
Use a Timeline Calendar to keep track of actions and information in your story. As a writer, you need to know “who did what when” so that you can unveil the sequence of events clearly and precisely to the reader and not get the timeline jumbled up. I find it particularly useful for cozy mysteries, but it would benefit any genre.
A quick example: At 10:00 A.M. Friday morning, my cozy mystery heroine, Peri, is leading a cemetery tour, when she receives news of an incident involving her godfather. The news spurs her to shortly jump in the car and drive from Florida to a Georgia hospital. She arrives at the hospital at 8:00 P.M., stays in a hotel overnight, and visits her godfather again Saturday morning. She heads to his recently purchased Victorian house around 10:00 A.M. Saturday morning, where she begins meeting a new cast of characters, including several ghosts and—before long--a murdered woman.
A Timeline Calendar keeps track of the key events listed in the previous paragraph, the actual timeline of the murder itself, and even smaller events that may become important later, such as the day and time the godfather’s wife allows Peri a sneak peek into his study. A Timeline Calendar helps refresh the author’s memory and prevent plot sequence inconsistencies. You'll find an example of one HERE that I created in Word, along with a Download button.
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Loretta C. Rogers
People often ask me how I manage to write so fast. First and foremost, this is a ginormous topic with no one size fits all answer. But to condense it down, my first thought is, “I don’t know. I just glue my butt to the chair and write.”
However, that does sound a bit cliche, and not the least bit helpful. Here’s my honest to goodness answer. Please keep in mind that this is what works for me.
Choose an idea you love enough to neglect everything you enjoy in life. You’re going to need to care enough to block out distractions and power through even when the going gets tough.
Don’t write about what you think you should write about, and avoid chasing trends. Instead, pick the idea that you just can’t shake, even if it seems a little crazy, and keeps you awake at night.
There is no perfect writing day. The goal is to get the words on the paper. If you hit a tricky patch where the words don’t come, don’t beat yourself up. Step away from the story, or print out what’ve you written and do some reading and editing, or just go read a good book by one of your favorite authors to inspire yourself.
Remember, all novels are made in the rewrite - and very few writers would dream of showing anyone their first draft.
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