Tomeworks Blog
Crafting Characters
All the genre conventions in the world don’t matter if your readers don’t enjoy following the people you, the author, have chosen to follow. Your well thought out magic system or steamy romantic affair are like the toppings on a pizza – without the base, the dough, the characters to support those trappings, it doesn’t mean much!
But how do you craft a compelling character?
How Hot Should You Write Your Romance?
How much sex should be in a romance novel? The short answer is that it depends. Readers and authors all have their own preferences. From longing glances and chaste hand holding to the most explicit, bed-breaking scenes and everything in between, how do you readers know what they’re getting into? And how do authors make sure that they don’t mislead their audience and shock readers with something spicier than what they wanted?
Mother’s Day Gifts for the Writer Mom in your Life
Our Tomeworks editors love their moms, friggin love them. Having a kid and trying to write, ooh boy, is that a struggle. Your favorite writer mom needs some validation and support. Just trust me. Even if she's tough as nails and doing it all without complaint, let her know you see her and appreciate what a badass she is.
Get the Most from Your Beta Readers
As a writer, you’ve likely heard about beta readers and how they’re an important tool for writers to determine how future readers might react to their work. But what exactly is a beta reader’s purpose? Are some beta readers better than others? And what can you, as the author, do to maximize the utility of beta readers for your own writing?
It Takes a Village to Write a Book
Today we live in a world of Zoom calls and binge-watched television shows, of isolation in the big city and blocking people on social media. But we are no closer as writers to being an island than our forebears ever were. We need each other as a community, as partners in creative construction, and as reviewers and feedback-givers maybe now more than ever.
Zombie Writing and How to Kill It
Today we’re going to discuss something much more horrible, much more frightening, something that will rise up from a dirty plot in the ground, grab your pacing by the legs, and drag it down, down, down until it too is a shambling mess, ambling mindlessly from one concept in your story to the next.
Zombie writing.
Roasting Writing Advice
Every time someone offers a piece for critique, there are a few items that seem to always make an appearance, regardless of whether or not they’re actually useful to the writer. Feedback needs to be applicable and it needs to be actionable, and sometimes, repeating a common slogan of writing like it’s immutable law isn’t either of those things. So today, we’re venting, we’re roasting, we’re chewing, and most importantly, we’re having fun by taking the piss out of pieces of common writing advice.
What is “incluing”, and why should you be doing it?
Introducing readers to a new world can be an interesting challenge. How do you explain to your readers the workings or a world that may be very different from our own? How do you explain what motivates a character if you can’t tell the audience directly?
How long should your novel be?
You’re ready to write a novel, but now that you’re staring at a blank page, you face a new question: how long is a novel, anyway? You’ve read books, so you know what a normal book length is, but how do you make sure that what you’re writing is an acceptable (publishable) length?
The answer is to use word count.