beth daniels

  1. Beth Daniels

    Writing Life Why Don’t I Get FIVE Star Reviews? with Beth Daniels

    Not long ago at the meeting of my local critique group, one of the members whined about yet another 3* review. We all sympathized with her, then she looked across the table at me and moaned, “Yeah, but you get 5* reviews!” Ever feel that way yourself? Then this workshop is for YOU! I don’t, by...
  2. Beth Daniels

    Genre-Mystery-Crime Writing Historical Mystery with Beth Daniels

    Those of us who loved history class…maybe even, like me, snapped up a college degree in history, planned all vacations around museums, castles (ruins and not ruins), ancient sites (Stonehenge, vanished pre-European period native American cultures), ghost towns, tours of historic homes, or...
  3. Beth Daniels

    Craft NANO Prep for Pantsers with Beth Daniels

    So often the Prep Talks involving preparing for National Novel Writing Month (aka November to the rest of the world) insist that outlines and beat sheets are the only way to go whether you’re pounding out the 1667 words a day for NANO or simply getting ready to spin a story. None of those...
  4. Beth Daniels

    Craft Breaking the Fourth Wall! What It Is, Why To Do It, and How To Do It! with Beth Daniels

    Breaking the 4th Wall does not require a sledgehammer or major machines of destruction driven by folks wearing hard hats. Its something a Beta reader or member of your critique group or an editor might have chided you about. When my first urban fantasy PI mystery comedy, RAVEN’S MOON, went to...
  5. Beth Daniels

    Craft Get Out of the Box! Spinning Tales & Creating Twists to Plot & Characters with Beth Daniels

    The phrase has been around for a long time: THINK OUTSIDE OF THE BOX! And in the current world of publishing, particularly in genre fiction, it’s fairly clear that quite a lot of writers have done just that. There were, after all, very few books published, compared to the numbers today, in urban...
  6. Beth Daniels

    Plot-Structure-GMC Treat Your Plot Like a Journey with Beth Daniels

    How do you get from page one to the final page in your novel, novella, or short story? You treat it like you would when making vacation plans, that’s how. Or, at least, it’s one way to look at it. And it’s the way I look at the journey when writing – in particular when it comes to my novels...
  7. Beth Daniels

    Plot-Structure-GMC Plot Math for Plotters, Pantsers and Plantsers by Beth Daniels

    *** Registration is now full. *** You’ve no doubt heard of many different ways of plotting a piece of genre fiction. Things like outlines, beat sheets, three act play, and who knows what else. But have you ever considered math as a guideline? Hang out with Beth Daniels, author of 30 published...
  8. Beth Daniels

    Plot-Structure-GMC Your Novel's BluePrint with Expert Author Beth Daniels

    Ask a veteran author about the importance of creating a strong and cohesive plot with a solid GMC and they'll tell you it's key to sustaining a long and rewarding publishing career. Don't let your book fall into an agent or editor's the slush pile with a weak plot and unmotivated characters...
  9. Beth Daniels

    Craft Writing Short Story Collections: The Glue That Makes Them Work with Beth Daniels

    Time is short, and you really need to write something to keep your hand in the game. You could inch your way through a novel length tale. But you could also be writing short stories. If you’ve been pounding out tales of 50,000 words, 85,000 words, or over 100,000 words, scaling back to the...
  10. Beth Daniels

    Craft The Newbie Guide to Writing a First Series with Beth Daniels

    When it comes to writing mysteries, there are probably far more that fall under the umbrella of being a series than there are those that are standalone titles. A series, after all, can suck readers into your fictional world and keep them coming back for more and more and more. But writing a...