Poked my head in at The Writer's Group for the first time in awhile. Answered some questions. Enjoyed some of the complementary snacks from the coffee table (SweetAiBelle: the hay-oreos were getting a little stale).

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Clickbait and page break abuse.

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It has come to my attention that a lot of people in the US are understandably freaking out about the presidential election. In fact, psychologists in the New York area are going so far as to declare Trump-Induced Anxiety is a Medical Thing. While the problems that plague America cannot be solved on a personal level, our personal discomfort with the election can. Here are a few things you

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Today's blog topic is courtesy of Manes. Thank you kindly for the idea

There is a certain flair to minimalism. All the cool authors harp on and on about writing exactly what you need to get your point across and no more. No adjectives, no adverbs, cut the narration, and hang the infodumps. Every so often, an author gets it in their head that we might as well go all the way and ditch the dialog too.

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"Is this a good idea" threads are one of the most common topics on writing forums to the point that most have to ban these types of threads to avoid getting spammed to death. However, when these types of questions are allowed, most people worth their salt will give a stock "I dunno, it depends on your execution"-like answer. It can be a very frustrating situation for a new writer looking for that extra validation before they begin putting something together, so I thought I would put together

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The fastest way to better writing is to write, but there comes a time when we go over our stories again and again and, though they are worlds better than what we were writing before, we cannot see much improvement between what we wrote today and what we wrote yesterday. It feels like we are treading water.

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It has become apparent to me over these last few weeks that I have gotten into a bit of a blogging doldrum. I have come to the conclusion that a weekly blog schedule is not going to end up delivering the quality of content I want to make, and keeping it up has been eating up time I could be using to try my hand at actually writing again. As such, while I will still be putting out blogs on occasion, they will be on a "Whenever they're done" basis rather than on any schedule. In the meantime,

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Killing extras is pointless. Everyone knows this. Authors asked what they could do better, and the general consensus seems to be that we need to "spend more time with the character" before they get killed off. But what constitutes this "more time"? It is allegedly supposed to be spent "getting to know the character better", but we have all heard Niceguy McOrphanOutcast's five page backstory, and he is still a waaaangsty monologuing dweeb. So what do we do?

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Authors can make anything they want come alive. We have an unlimited special effects budget, thousands of potential castmembers begging for a chance to get out of our brains, can shape whole continents by writing in a notebook, and if physics are not cool enough for our story, we can roll our own.

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Some stories are "rushed." Others "drag on and on." Unfortunately, the internet writing community does not have very clear common language for discussing the mechanics of this in depth. There is this vague idea that if a story is going "too fast," then you need to add more words, but what you are supposed to do with those words is unclear. It is just as easy to "slow down" a story with filler as it is with legitimate content, and those two things can look suspiciously similar. Likewise, if

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