Tag: outlining. story structure

Helping Writers Become Authors

The Internet hosts an amazing feast of website for writers. Some offer weird advice (it is the internet) and some offer good advice, but some offer excellent advice and provide step by step guidance—for free. One of those excellent and free sites is K. M. Weiland’s Helping Writers Become Authors.  The website was the winner of Writer’s Digest 10 Best Websites for Writers in 2014, 2015 and 2016.

Helping Writers Become Authors is easy to navigate with a helpful menu across the top. On your first trip to HWBA, click on “Start Here” where K. M. Weiland has organized her “whopping big” website into quick steps to get you started. Two of my favorite articles is included here : How to Write Character Arcs and The Do’s and Don’ts of Storytelling According to Marvel.

She has free books Crafting Unforgettable Characters and 5 Secrets of Story Structure and for those of you who like to listen to craft she has a huge series of podcasts available both on her website or through iTunes. She also has a giant Story Structure Database where she deconstructs books and movies pointing out where the story structure is spot on and where it needs help. It can be very helpful to see the story structure bones of other authors. The database includes new movies like LOGAN and old ones like the 1959 BEN-HUR and books like WHITE FANG and GONE GIRL. The database also includes two short stories and a video game.

K.M. Weiland has several reasonably priced books about writing from Creating Character Arcs and Structuring Your Novel to Outlining Your Novel. Structuring Your Novel and Outlining Your Novel are also available as workbooks.

Just this week she also released Outlining Your Novel Workbook Computer Program (for PC and Mac) which I’m pretty sure is going to be a birthday present for me.  I am very interested in seeing how this program compares to Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Pro which I use and really like.

She also writes historical and speculative fiction. Her titles include the award winning Storming, Dreamlander and Behold the Dawn. (Dreamlander is a free ebook.) I’ve read Dreamlander and enjoyed it. I’m looking forward to reading her other novels especially Storming—because hello, 1920s Dieselpunk!

Check out Helping Writers Become Authors. Let me know what your favorite resource is.

Marianne H. Donley makes her home in Tennessee with her husband and son. She is a member of Bethlehem Writers Group, Romance Writers of America, OCC/RWA, and Music City Romance Writers. When Marianne isn’t working on A Slice of Orange, she might be writing short stories, funny romances or quirky murder mysteries, but this could be a rumor.