The Five Keys to Telling a Great Story According to Tangled

Over on Fairy Tale Central, my other blog I co-author with Arielle and Faith, we’ve been featuring the story of Rapunzel for all the month of May. And, naturally, when one thinks Rapunzel, they’re minds probably jump straight to TANGLED. I adore the original fairy tale of the girl with impossibly long hair stuck in a tower. The concept is rather fascinating, with such great story fodder. But my absolute favorite adaptation is most definitely Tangled. Actually, my favorite animated movie of all time is Tangled. Which is saying something, ‘cause I like a lot of animated movies. BUT GUYS.…

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Seven Story Elements I Love to Write

I think every writer, no matter how many books they produce, have certain story elements they return to again and again. It’s like a fingerprint we leave in our stories, or a promise to our readers that they will always find these things within our tales. And it’s for ourselves as well. We write because we love it. That is the core of why we do this crazy story-making thing. And there’s just some things we love too much to only write about in one story. On twitter there was a tag going around asking “How you know I wrote…

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Deal or No Deal {A Rumpelstiltskin Short Story}

As part of Fairy Tale Central, Arielle, Faith, and I thought it’d be super fun to share a writing prompt each month that goes along with that month’s featured fairy tale. We can then take the prompt and write a piece based off of it on our personal blogs AND have YOU GUYS do the same if you want. That way we can share ALL the fairy tale love! It’s just so, sooo much fun reimaging fairy tales. And this is a great, quick way to play around with all the many possibilities. If you missed it (thought probably not…

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{Linkup} The Language of Worlds: Anya

It’s time for another Language of Worlds! *happy dance* You know I jump at any chance to write a post about my story characters. It’s just way too fun! If you have nooo clue what this is, it’s a writer’s linkup created by the fabulous Liv. K. Fisher, in which she gives us 10 questions every couple of months to answer for any one of our original characters. You can find this newest edition HERE. So life has been, erm, something lately. Alllll of March was spent switching/redesigning my blog to a self-hosted site, as well as working on Fairy…

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The Plot Holes of Rumpelstiltskin: Finding Story Inspiration Within Fairy Tales

As you all probably know (since I’ve been screaming about it endlessly now) Fairy Tale Central went live last week! And we’ve had such an abundance of enthusiasm. We are DELIGHTED at the overwhelming response we’ve received. It’s been the most amaaaazing week interacting with you guys and sharing our first posts. GAH. I’M SO EXCITED. Each month over there we’re focusing on one specific fairy tale. If you’ve visited the site, then you know for our first month we chose Rumpelstiltskin. Yes, that story of a strange little man who can unexplainably spin straw into gold has been such…

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The Language of Worlds – Syram

Language of Worlds is back! *happy dance* If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you can find all the info HERE. But essentially, it’s a linkup created by the ever lovely Liv K. Fisher, catered toward speculative Christian writers (though anyone is welcome to join in!) and asks ten questions about any character of our choosing. I debated who to answer the questions for, because technically I’m shifting my focus back on Burning Thorns as I gear to do this next edit. Buuuut I talk about those characters a LOT. So I decided, at least for today, to…

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Know the Novel Part 3 – The Writing of Kings Bleed Gold {NaNoWriMo 2018}

  Annnnd I am back to go ahead and answer the questions to my Know the Novel linkup, which I posted yesterday if you missed it. *wink, wink* I have news. Super excited, happy neeews… I FINISHED WRITING KINGS BLEED GOLD. Fiiinally. IT. IS. DONE. I mean, the first draft is done… It needs a total uber major rewrite but we’re not thinking about that right now because IT IS WRITTEN AND I AM SO RELIEVED. I feverishly kept writing through all this first week of December and Thursday night, December 6th, I made it to THE END. I may…

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Know the Novel Part 3 – Writing and Beyond {A Writers Linkup}

IT. IS. HEEEERE! The 3rd and FINAL installment of my 3-part writers linkup Know the Novel. And I’m super excited about this one! It is officially December (WUT???), and a ton of us have just finished NaNoWriMo and have new novels under our belts (and probably some wild stories about writing them to go with it), and thus this last part of Know the Novel is alllll about how writing the WIP went and what our next plan of action is. If you missed any of the parts and have no clue what I’m talking about, here’s all the details!…

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NaNoWriMo 2018: Thoughts, Stats, and Snippets

IT’S DECEMBER. December. DECEMBERRRR. NaNoWriMo is over. WUT???? We have made it through the insanity that is November a.k.a National Novel Writing Month and I MAY BE A LITTLE SHOCKED. NaNo is always this weird paradox of time in that it feels like 3 days long and a lifetime all at once. I think it’s because the days are zipping by in my life, but I’m also so immersed in my characters lives, I feel as if I’ve gone on the same ginormous, life-changing journey as them. When I think back to the beginning of November, it seems like yesterday,…

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NaNoWriMo ‘18 Week Four: Involving Ballets, a Ton of Turkey, and Crying

Um. So this will be my last post for the month of November. NaNoWriMo will be over by next Monday. We’re less than a week away from the end. WHAT EVEN WHAT???? Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like my novel will be even sort of over by the end of the month. I thiiink I can finish it within the first week or two of December, buuut unless some magical writing fairy takes over my body for the rest of the week (I mean, if you know of one I’m hiring) I’m like 99.9% sure it ain’t gettin’ done by the…

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