The Best Craft Tips These Ten Authors Ever Received

Janet here. All month we're celebrating Seekerville's birthday with delicious food, fantastic prizes and terrific posts!! Ten years ago the Seekers started on Unpubbed Island. Once we sold, we moved to this quaint village on the mainland. Seekerville is populated with some of the nicest writers and readers you'd ever want meet! I'm thankful for this community and for each and every one of you! Thanks for making these ten years fabulous!

In honor of our birthday, I've asked these wonderful authors to share the best writing craft tip they ever received.  

Christmas Amnesia

Laura Scott: My best craft tip is to consider each protagonist's goal, motivation and conflict for the story. External goals drive your plot and internal goals drive the romance. If you can nail your characters internal and external conflicts your story will write itself! (Okay not really, but you'll have a good start.)

Cowboy Lawman's
Christmas Reunion

Louise Gouge: When I started writing seriously in 1984, I was happily unaware of any writing “rules.” I had the freedom to create my story as I saw fit; therefore, my first novel was a masterpiece…or so I thought. But just to be sure I’d done everything right, I went back to college to earn a creative writing degree. In my senior year, my mentor professor read my book, then called me in for a conference to ask, “Whose story is this?” Not realizing this was a trick question, I quipped, “It’s Janice’s story. Well, and Buck’s. And maybe a little bit is their son’s.” Professor Wyatt deadpanned, “And the desk clerk, the fry cook, the truck driver, etc.” Seems I had head-hopped my way through two hundred pages, making sure my readers would know everyone’s reaction to whatever was happening in the scene. I mean, don’t they do that in movies when they cut away from the hero or heroine to show a bystander’s reaction? Turns out it doesn’t work that way in fiction. Readers are distracted from the story when they have to figure out whose mind they’re in. Thus was I introduced to Point of View (POV), meaning, through whose eyes we experience the story. Professor Wyatt taught me the importance of staying in one character’s head per scene. And the fewer POVs per book, the better. In romance novels, we mainly want to know what the heroine and hero are thinking. Anyone else’s thoughts need to be revealed through dialogue or actions seen by the main characters. I’ve stuck with that principle throughout my twenty-five published novels.

An Amish Courtship

Jan Drexler: My number one craft tip: You can't edit words you haven't written. Just get them down and fix them later. (Seekerville)

Mail-Order Marriage Promise

Regina Scott: The best advice I ever received on craft is to know your core story. As writers, particular themes and ideas call to us. Across everything we write, there is a core truth. Mine is realizing your place in the world, how you can contribute. Once I recognized that, I could go deeper with my writing, shine the light on stories that had been only glimmers. Knowing my core story helped me understand who I am as a writer. 

Sweetbriar Cottage

Denise Hunter: The best craft tip I ever received is pretty simple: get into and out of your scenes as quickly as possible. When you do anything else you risk boring the reader. Of course, one needs to set the scene. Give the reader an idea of who’s there and where “there” is. But that can usually be done in a few sentences. Come into a scene too early and we make the reader weed through a bunch of needless information. Same thing when it’s on the back end of the scene. Get in, accomplish your scene goal, and get out. It'll keep your story clipping along at a nice, brisk pace.

Pony Express Christmas Bride

Rhonda Gibson: Lauraine Snelling shared this tip with me. Keep a notebook of the book you are currently working on. Or a notebook with your ideas in it. I keep one notebook with my current book that I'm working on and I have a divider at the back with a section called 'Future Ideas' at the back. This notebook has been a lifesaver for me. I can take it everywhere 

Mail Order Christmas Baby

Sherri Shackelford: Never listen to any piece of advice that says you 'have' to do something. You don't 'have' to write every day to be a writer. You don't 'have' to use hundreds of note cards and fourteen multi-colored sharpies to plot out every sentence of your story. You don't 'have' to use The Hero's Journey, or The 'W' Plot, or the The Snowflake Method. The only thing you 'have' to do is find out what works for you. Your method, your rules, your words. Then remember that your process may change over time, and that's okay too. Your talent doesn't desert you--even on bad days. 

Reunited by Danger

Carol Post: I’ve received lots of great craft tips over the years, but the one that made the biggest difference in my writing came from a contest judge. She said I needed to learn to write in deep point of view. Since I had no idea what it was, I had to google it. There are lots of great articles out there, but one in particular really made it click. I learn well by example, and this article was perfect for that. It started with a scenario in a single sentence. Then that short passage was reworked several times, each time including more depth. The fifth and final attempt pulled me thoroughly into the character’s head. The passage filled a good half page and really came alive, with so much emotion, some great sensory details and even some symbolism. Although I copied and pasted the examples, I wish I had saved the link to the article. I’ve looked for it since to be able to share it and have never found it again. But what I gleaned from that one post pretty much changed my writing overnight.

Love Lessons

Cate Nolan: The best CRAFT writing tip I ever got was actually from the title of a book. I was browsing in Barnes & Noble's reference section and noticed a book called Writers Write. I picked it up and flipped through, but after a bit, I realized all the wisdom was actually contained in the title. Writers Write. I went home, typed those words, printed them out in a huge font, and posted the sign by my computer. That's when I began my commitment to a daily word count. At first I only demanded a minimum of 100 words per day every day. Eventually I increased it to 1,000. I know this is supposed to be a CRAFT tip, and I think it really is because I learned that everything about my writing got better if I just sat down and put in the time to put down the words every single day.  In keeping with that is another quote I found. I have no idea where it came from, but I wrote it on a little slip of paper and kept it beside my bed for years. "She wrote what she loved until she loved what she wrote. And she sent it out one more time." Writers write. Best advice ever. Sort of like Nike's Just do it.

How to Write When Everything
Goes Wrong

Allie Pleiter: Play "what if"--but an extreme version. Take any scene or plot (this works especially well when you are stuck) and brainstorm 25 "what if"s. You can't do five or six because all those will be reasonable. Expected. Boring. You want to force yourself to be unreasonable, surprising, or even shocking. It's always in the last ten ideas that the real gems unearth themselves. What if he's lying? What if she knows? What if they're both lying? What if they're both telling the truth but each believes the other is lying? Take a thread and run to extremes. You may come up with 24 ridiculous or boring options, but you will likely discover the one option that ignites your story. I have found this to work not only when you're just generally stuck, but especially when you feel you are too stressed to write--somehow the stress in your life shuts down your internal editor so that your ideas become that much more extreme--and exciting! 

           Two Bonus Craft Tips because writers can't have too many!

With This Pledge

Debra Clopton: I'm not certain which of these has been most important in my career but both have been instrumental. First, sit in the chair and write. Production has been my friend from day one of my publishing career and it still is. But second, and what I believe everyone needs to know, is the tip my first and long time editor Krista Stroever, advised me soon after she bought me, when edits came in from her or the other editors my main job was to protect my voice. I took that advice and picked my battles carefully, but when it came to changing my voice that was where I stood my ground.

Tracker

Lenora Worth:An argument is not conflict. Two people fighting in a scene is not conflict. Conflict is what they are NOT fighting about in the scene, the things they hold back and internalize--that's the conflict.

For a chance to win one of two $10 Amazon gift card, leave a comment. Yes, that's two prizes, one for a writer and one for a reader. 

Writers please share the best craft tip you've ever received. 

For readers, tell us the best tip you've ever received for doing anything. We all can use good advice!

In honor of our 10th birthday, I brought coffee and tea and trays of ten different cookies. Choose from chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, snickerdoodle, molasses, sugar, peanut butter, lemon bars, chocolate crinkles, peanut butter blossom and monster cookies.