Craft Articles
Join us in exploring others’ craft and building our own.
Here you will find explorations of mentor texts – articles that dive into specific craft elements in published books, interviews with authors, and tips on growing and improving as a writer.
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SIDEWRITING TAKEOVER: Asking the Right Questions with Louise Hawes
I've finally discovered a way of dumping this inner perfectionist for at least part of the journey. I learned through trial and error that the keyboard, domain of the delete key, precursor to print, was where my perfectionist tended to take control. Pencil and paper was where my heart led the way. Which is why I began to "channel" my characters through freewriting. Like poetry, freewrites are a way I ditch my inner critic and make the switch from common sense to felt sense, from thoughts to emotions.
SIDEWRITING TAKEOVER: Exploring a Character's Misbelief with Jen Jobart
For me, writing a novel is about transferring the nebulous ideas in my head to a story that feels true for others. This can be a tricky process! Sidewriting helps me understand what my brain is trying to tell me.
SIDEWRITING TAKEOVER: Dive into Character Relationships with David Macinnis Gill
Sidewriting takes us away from linear and helps us explore divergent thoughts and also digs into our subconscious, which actually does know everything about our stories and is just waiting to tell us all about them.
SIDEWRITING TAKEOVER: Writing for Emotional Power with Sarah S. Davis
Sidewriting gives me ammo in a story to write a more deeply felt and developed emotional story.
SIDEWRITING TAKEOVER: Gossip Your Way Through the Story with Mary Winn Heider
The sidewriting exercise I rely on most is really simple. I write a messy, gossipy version of my story (or scene or conflict). I handwrite it, like it’s a note I might pass in class, and I allow myself plenty of gossipy digressions. . . . I’ve developed a kind of outlining process I love, but sometimes I really crave the structure of gossip, the way it’s built on cause and effect.
SIDEWRITING TAKEOVER: Side-thinking and Personality with Aimee Lucido
I've always found it fun to do small bits of sidewriting because it feels like a novelty. Like, when someone asks you what your character would be for Halloween, or what sorts of TV shows they watch, it's fun to think about that sort of thing.
SIDEWRITING TAKEOVER: Time Traveling with Jennifer Ziegler
I always start with character. For me, that’s the spark that makes me want to write. Who is this person in my head? What are they grappling with? What do they need to figure out (about themselves and/or life in general)? To answer these questions, I write scenes about them and sometimes in their voice.
SIDEWRITING TAKEOVER: Interviewing your Character with Karen Krossing
I ask you: What questions do you need to ask your characters? If that feels too challenging, Walter Dean Myers’s advice in Just Write: Here’s How! is to “Come up with a bunch of questions you might want to ask about someone you just met in real life.”
SIDEWRITING TAKEOVER: Why sidewrite? (And what is it anyway?)
If you’re a writer then you likely have feelings about sidewriting. You know, all that extra writing you do (or wonder if you should do) in order to figure out and enhance your story. Sidewriting can be anything from doing a story spine to free form writing to letters from your characters to hand writing a scene to word associations to writing from a new POV to plot graphs to--well, you get the idea. Sidewriting is any writing you do that (generally) doesn’t go into your actual manuscript.
Scene Questions: Give Your Scenes Shape and Momentum
A SCENE QUESTION is a story question on a smaller scale. Introduced at or near the beginning of a scene (or even at the end of the previous scene), the scene question is a yes/no question that will drive the tension in the scene and keep readers turning pages so they can find out the answer.
Leading your reader to ask the right questions: Revising your first chapter Part 2, Pay Attention, Carter Jones by Gary D. Schmidt
Today, let’s look at a middle grade novel--one very different in style and tone--to see how well framed questions can guide the reader through the first chapter.
Leading your reader to ask the right questions: Revising your first chapter Part 1, Sadie by Courtney Summers
One way to be sure your first chapter will have the effect you want is to focus on what questions will arise in the readers’ minds as they read, and then revise to control those questions to serve your purpose.
Controlling Beliefs: The Secret Engine for a Novel
Sometimes in planning a story, you might find that the character’s desire is a little too abstract, or that their desire isn’t really something they can affect. There is a solution: a controlling belief.
Story Questions
Framing your story with a STORY QUESTION that gets answered by the end of the novel works because it adds forward momentum, keeps your reader wanting to turn the page, and--since you delay the final answer to the question until the end--builds tension
Retro Post #4: The Magic of a Secret Space: Beetle Boy and Beyond
In a world where adults are constantly telling children what to do, which vegetables to eat, when to go to bed, and sometimes, what to think and feel, the idea of a secret space can be magical and captivating.
Retro Post #3: Characters to Love–and Telling Them Apart–in THE PENDERWICKS
More important than their differences and easily distinguished voices, these sisters work together as a team. And arguably, it’s this aspect of the novel that makes it so appealing. We see their cohesiveness in the initial reminiscence of the opening, but we also see it through their interactions and their family codes and practices.
