writing romance mastery summit part one
26 Aug 2024
Over the last week, I watched videos from this month’s Writing Romance Mastery Summit. Though pure romance isn’t my thing, I figured at worst it wouldn’t be terribly relevant to me. Since it was free as long as you watched the talks in a specific time frame, I didn’t lose anything by watching, and in fact, I did pick up a few tips that I really liked that I want to write a bit about here to help them stick in my mind going forward.
To keep from getting too verbose, I’ll be writing two parts to this post. Each post will deal with two of the ideas I took from the summit that were particularly helpful.
The Next Three Things
The one that was the most helpful, and the one I hadn’t thought about before in quite the terms discussed, boiled down to knowing “the next three things” when you’re writing. As discussed, it meant that at the end of a writing session, you should always know the next three things you need to do in future sessions.
Basically, you need to know concretely where you’re going.
I’ve seen this idea discussed in other terms before, and I do a variation on this when I’m drafting stories, making sure I have a note at the beginning of a session about what I want to do. Sometimes this is simply the outline. Sometimes, if I’m writing more freely, it’s just some ideas I’ve come up with. I’ve even seen writing advice that said to stop writing at a point where you know what’s going to happen next.
But for whatever reason, I really like this phrasing and the flexibility. The speaker made a point to mention that you didn’t need to know exactly what happened right after your current scene, but you do need to have a clear path through the story.
One of my main problems with writing, especially longer stories with more in the way of plot happening, is that somewhere along the way, I stop having a good idea of what to do next. Even fi I have an outline, I’ll lose steam. Figuring out how to get a character from point A to point B can be a challenge.
To make use of this in my writing practice, I’m going to try ending each session with a short brainstorm of three points I’d like to pick up on in future sessions. Though I’ll try to keep them focused on things I would like to write in the next session specifically, I won’t penalize myself if I only know more generally where I want to go next.
I think this will really help me improve with my serial writing skills, mixing the best of following an outline (which for me tend to be vague no matter how specific I try to make them) and flailing around while I try to play it by ear.
I hope to report back with good news about its efficacy.
Things to Include on Author Websites
In all honesty, I don’t know what to do with an author website. I know what they’re for, and I know what needs to be included on them, but because I’m still establishing myself, I really don’t have much to put up. This has stymied me time and time again. Every time I try to think of an update, in fact, and checking out other people’s sites haven’t helped much at this time, because I have little to share.
Perhaps this is a sign I should have something done before I make one of these, but I like the idea of having everything in place as soon as possible, because it will have to be done anyway and I like to be prepared.
I watched this video hoping it might help, but also being aware that it might not. Luckily, it did manage to include some ideas that even I could make use of now, or at any point. Better, it’s an idea I like that I hadn’t seen around before. (Admittedly, this information could be all over the place and I just haven’t seen it discussed. In fact, I’m surprised I haven’t thought of it myself.)
In short, the speaker suggested adding bonus content for your stories on your website.
Pretty simple, and a lot of fun, and doesn’t require flogging a huge backlog of already released stories to give the website content.
Suggestions included character profiles, deleted scenes, special stories that could only be found on the website. The speaker had many other ideas as well, but those were the ones I liked the best. They’re certainly a lot of fun, and I definitely have a lot of brainwork I do that doesn’t get to see the light of day. Unobtrusively sharing it on an author website sounds like a great idea, and I’m looking forward to implementing it as soon as possible.
Next post, I’ll be sharing the best tips I learned about planning and having a winning mindset.