Dear Writer

This week on Dear Writer, we tried out doing some personality quizzes as our characters. Our chosen quizzes were a Myers Briggs personality test from 16personalities.com, and Love Languages from 5lovelanguages.com. The results we got were unexpected and interesting. We discussed the way we thought this could be used to help write our novels and increase creativity.

This week, we continue our discussion about writing sequels and series. We give some tips about writing a series, chat about some of the technical aspects of series writing, and talk about how different cover designs can help show your book is part of a series.

On this week's craft episode, we discuss writing series and sequels. We chat about the pros and cons of writing a series versus a standalone novel, and some of the writing elements that need to be considered before embarking on a series.

This week on our Author Spotlight we had Sue Glamuzina and Kynan Wright, the organizers of the Auckland Writers' Anthology, 'Tales of the Domain'. We both partook in this Anthology, and it was interesting to have a behind-the-scenes chat to glean how the anthology was created. Click here --> https://mybook.to/talesofthedomain <-- if you are interested in purchasing the book 'Tales of the Domain' through Amazon, or purchase a copy through Sue and Kynan directly by contacting them through the Auckland Writers Anthology Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/618294412686644

This week on Dear Writer we tried another creative exercise, called "eight" which Ashley found on the Reedsy blog. It involved using the 8th sentence from the 8th chapter of a random fiction book, and using it to create a poem eight lines long which relates to your current work in progress.

This week we continued with our discussion of short fiction, in particular discussing short stories. We talked of our (limited) experience in writing short stories and how we had found the experience coming from a background of primarily novel writing.

This time on Dear Writer we talked about writing short fiction. In part one, we discussed what short fiction is and some of the elements of short fiction that are important in creating an engaging story.

Today on Dear Writer, Sarah talked with Jennifer Chastain, a romance author from a small town in the state of New York, who now lives in North Carolina with her husband. We had a very engaging and inspiring conversation about Jennifer's journey so far, and her upcoming romantic suspense series.

This episode of Dear Writer, we were lucky enough to speak with Lee Murray about writing speculative fiction. Lee is a USA Today bestselling author and a four-time winner of the International Bram Stoker Awards. She writes speculative fiction in a number of different sub-genres, and resides in the beautiful Bay of Plenty district in New Zealand.

On this week's episode of Dear Writer, we continue our discussion about creating tension in fiction. We talk about some the common techniques for making tension and chat about some of our writing tips for enhancing tension in your novel.