[Link] A 5-Minute Fix for a Blah Scene

by Janice Hardy

Sometimes the best fix isn’t changing what characters say—it’s changing where they say it.

This might be sacrilegious as a science fiction and fantasy writer, but I dislike writing description—especially settings. I’m more of a dialogue and action gal, and my first drafts (okay, sometimes second drafts as well), have a lot of “white room” scenes, where nothing about the setting is mentioned. This was a big problem in my early writing days, since SFF readers enjoy the world building and setting and all the things I had to slog through to write.

I got feedback such as:

• I can’t picture the setting
• Where is this happening? Could they interact more with the room?
• I feel unanchored, and there’s no sense of place

All of it was justified, and after a lot of reading, learning, and forcing myself to just do it, I found a way to enjoy writing setting descriptors.

I stopped thinking of setting as decoration and started using it as a storytelling tool.

Setting works best when it does something—not when it just sits there.

A vivid location can add atmosphere, but an active setting can add pressure to a ticking clock, reveal emotion a character is struggling with, and shape the choices that character makes. It becomes part of the story, not just where the story takes place.

Read the full article: http://blog.janicehardy.com/2020/08/a-5-minute-fix-for-blah-scene.html

[Link] How to Revise Your Novel Like a Pro (Without Losing Your Mind) With Alice Sudlow

by Savannah Gilbo

You've finally done it. After months of wrestling with character arcs, plot holes, and that stubborn middle section that refused to cooperate, you've typed those magical words: "The End." Your first draft is complete, sitting there on your computer like a 100,000-word monument to your persistence.

But now what?

If you're like most writers, you probably opened that document the very next day and started fixing sentences. Maybe you rewrote Chapter One for the fifteenth time. Perhaps you got lost tweaking dialogue tags and obsessing over whether you used "said" too many times. And three months later, you're still stuck in the same five chapters, polishing the same scenes over and over while the rest of your manuscript gathers digital dust.

This is exactly what I talked about with Alice Sudlow, a developmental editor and book coach, on the Fiction Writing Made Easy podcast. Alice and I have been in the editing world for nearly ten years, and we've both observed this pattern repeatedly. The problem isn't your writing ability. It's that nobody taught you how to edit a novel.

The Manuscript Editing Mistake That Keeps Writers Stuck Forever

Most writers approach editing like they approached writing their first draft: they start on page one and work their way through. It seems logical, right? After all, that's how you wrote the book in the first place.

But as Alice explained in our conversation, editing a book is a completely different beast from writing a book. It requires a different process, different tools, and most importantly, a different mindset.

Read the full article: https://www.savannahgilbo.com/blog/novel-revision-strategy-with-alice-sudlow