NaNoWriMo – Page 2 – Liana Brooks

Archive by category "NaNoWriMo" (Page 2)

Stages of Love – Lust and Rough-Hewn Spears

Love is a many-facted thing. We pine for it. We write about it. We dream of it. We mourn the loss and yet somehow always seem to wind up with our hearts broken again… Love is rough. And as much as people claim to know about love we often forget…

The Ultimate NaNo Prep Post (good for the rest of the year too)

This is the master post for everything I recommend to get you prepped for NaNoWriMo or a Fast Draft. Remember, each author is unique and so is each book, so be sure to play with this and make it work for you. The way I think and the steps I…

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…

How Long Does It Take To Write A Book?

*Originally published February, 2014, I have updated the Novel section to reflect what I’ve learned in the past few years.* How long does it take to write and publish a book? Answer: It depends on the book and the form of publication. Here are my averages: Short Stories – like…

Pacing Matters!

There are times as a reader who also happens to write that I want to quietly pull another author aside and give them some advice. Nine times outs of ten what I want to talk to them about is pacing. It’d be a quick conversation. “Sweetie, these are really fun…

NaNoWriMo Boot Camp Day 6: Set The Stage

One last day of boot camp and then you’ll be ready to write your novel like a boss! … okay, so let me be honest here: I could write more. You could do 31 Days of NaNo Prep. You could spend a year getting a novel together. You could skip…

NaNoWriMo Boot Camp Day 5: Motivation and Inspiration

Let’s practice a little visualization… You sit down in front of your computer on November 4th with 6,000 words written and the plan to write Chapter 3. You have your notes and your outlines. This is the perfect time of your writing day, and everything is how you need it…