1. Writing daily is a lot easier to do if you are kind to yourself and do not set impossible goals. Some people can do NaNoWriMo every month because their lifestyles permit it. Others can't because of work, responsibilities, health, etc. Set a reasonable goal to start and adjust according to your lifestyle and that's the bare minimum to hit. If it's 50 words, it's 50 words. If it's a 1000, it's a 1000. It's subject to change based on your circumstances.
2. Accept that you are going to have to edit. I see a lot of people who cannot stand editing; some of them even hope that if their outline is perfect, then they won't have to do a developmental edit and can just make a clean first draft and it's good to go. I'm sorry to say, but if you want to be traditionally published, you're going to have to get in there and be willing to kill your darlings. If you are going to self-pub, it's still probably a good idea to be willing to kill your darlings.
3. This is pretty linked to number 2: the more you write, the more you nurture a gut instinct. You start to be able to see that something isn't working. Listen to your gut. Do not ignore it. If it's telling you 'this is wrong,' either keep going and accept that you might have a huge rewrite ahead of you or go back and figure out what's wrong and either edit it or save it for later.
4. I love commas and medium length sentences too much. That's one of my biggest hurdles. I have to actively think about sentence length, sentence structures, and sentence starters. The more you do it, the more naturally it will come to you, but, I'll be real, it's really freaking annoying when you used to be able to write 45 words a minute and now you're chugging along at 15 words a minute because you're too busy going 'this is the third long sentence with a semi-colon in a row!!! NOOOO!'
5. Learn to walk away. This is a very hard lesson for writers to learn, but it's incredibly important. Sometimes you are not ready for this project right now or it's not ready for you. Maybe it needs more time to marinate, maybe you're not actually interested in it and it was just a shiny idea to avoid working on the real WIP that haunts you and is staring at you as you desperately try to do anything besides write it, or maybe it's just not an idea you can write exactly how you want to write it. It's good and crucial to figure out when a project is going to teach you something and push through anyways, but it's also good to learn when that project isn't viable.
6. Reading is so important, but not just reading to read. I really recommend getting involved in writing communities and offering to be a beta reader or CP (critique partner) and honing your critiquing skills. Reddit has a BetaReaders, DestructiveReaders, and PubTips subs, there's also Critique Circle and Ladies Who Critique. I've heard stories of people finding betas and CPs here on Tumblr and on Twitter.
7. Write a variety of things. This is not going to work for every single person, but it's going to work for a lot of people. If you hit a wall and you find that you are repeating yourself, set the project aside and work on something else. Fanfic, a short story, move from romance to a horror, instead of that epic fantasy, write a contemporary novel about a lamp salesman with an absurdist bent. Many authors do this. Crop rotation is one of the ways to keep your creative well full and will let you look at the main work with a more objective eye as well as help you keep bringing new ideas to the table. If the MC keeps getting trapped and keeps getting out of it by being clever, there's a good possibility it might feel repetitive and your reader isn't going to be engaged anymore.
8. Find people who will be honest with you when a work isn't cutting it. As artists, it's so hard to share our work and our friends and family don't want to hurt our feelings, so you might have to go outside of them for good feedback (if they read in your genre and age category and have similar interests, they might be good for feedback). The truth is, we might now what our weaknesses are, but it's hard for us to know if we're successful in combating them without fresh eyes. We all know a lot about our stories whereas someone who isn't us doesn't. That might feel obvious, but there's a lot of authors who try to publish and nobody has ever seen their work so they don't know why they aren't getting requests for fulls. Open yourself up to the experience of being critiqued.
9. Recognize when you are avoiding writing. Maybe I'm the only person that is struggling with this, but it hit me only a few days ago exactly what things I do when I am avoiding writing. I play 2048 or Othello online. I'm a creature of habit so maybe it's more specific than it is for others, but by seeing that and recognizing it, I now let myself play one round and if I'm still not writing, I go do something else. If the weather is good, I go for a walk. If it's not, I might exercise inside or turn on some Two Steps from Hell and play a few rounds of a game that lets me zone out. I might even turn to YouTube or Netflix and find either a documentary, a testimonial, or a piece of media from a cultural that isn't mine. I do what I can to either put me in the writing headspace or I do research for my writing. Not every hour of the day has to be productive, but my set-aside writing time needs to be productive to my writing. If another project wants to be started, I will give in and write it so at least something has been written.
10. I don't just write a story to know what a story is, I also write a story to know what it isn't. This results in me rewriting my chapter one five times until I get to chapter two. This does not work for everyone and can be an active hinderance to perfectionists or people who get stuck in revision loops, but it works for me. I might start a story in space and realize it's not working and then set it in Canada 1949 and then realize that isn't working and put it in a secondary world with elves and then cut the elves. To someone who isn't me, it might look like madness, but I learn my characters' backstories, internal wounds, the way they think, about their families, their backgrounds, etc. very quickly and they solidify in a way that makes it easier for me to channel their voice. And it can change as I move pieces about, of course, and I have to be open to that, but if I know that MC has PTSD because of XYZ before I'm too far in, then I can start working with it ASAP. As such, some writers' advice is just not for me and that's OK.

• the culture’s sense of humour, with examples of popular jokes,
• popular literature VS classic literature,
• what children learn in school (especially history, maths, biology),
• the common grammar mistakes your conlang’s native speakers make,
• the culture’s cuisine, with recipes,
• toy production,
• the embarassing old songs people sing when they are really drunk, but would not admit knowing while sober.

1. Employ the causal chain - every action must be connected to what comes before and after. Each action and beat needs to have impact. They don't all need to be shown but the author needs to know what they are. It is impossible to build suspense without this principle. Things can't happen "just because" or there's no reason for the audience to become engaged with your sequence of events or do things like make predictions. All subsequent rules follow from this principle.
2. When showing a new type of fictional magic or science, you must show it work before you can show it break. For example, if a character has the ability to summon objects into their hand, we need to see them do so successfully and see how it works, before we see it break at a critical moment during the climax. Otherwise, the audience can't be expected to follow why this situation is unusual because they don't know how it works during normal circumstances.
3. When claiming a character is good at something, you must show them succeeding at it before you show them failing at it during a moment of pressure. Otherwise, we don't believe you when you establish your character's competence or badassery. For example, when saying your character is an excellent military commander, we need to see them win a fight using those skills and tactics. We can't open with a fight they lose, or else the character and author lose credibility. By all means, show the experienced hero/military leader/ruler/assassin/mage etc break down during a moment of intense pressure, fall down sobbing in terror at a truly insurmountable foe, or otherwise fail to meet the moment, but don't do this before we've seen them succeed at least once, or the moment loses impact.
4. During the build-up of tension, coincidences should hurt the hero and help the antagonist. This plays into the causal chain rule. Coincidences that help the hero feel cheap. Coincidences that help the villain raise the tension.
5. Every beat, whenever possible, should be connected to conscious action by central characters (hero, love interest, or villain). The more events are connected to purposeful action by key characters, the more satisfying the causal chain for the reader.
6. Avoid things that happen "just because" whenever possible. You can have one or two, sure, but the more often things happen "just because" the less interesting the story is, especially if those "just because" moments are core to the story. Fiction is not real life. Audiences are drawn to stories where purposeful actions dictate the success or failure of the characters.

• Astronaut Chris Hadfield answers the Web’s most searched questions
• Chris Hadfield reviews Space Movies, from ‘Gravity’ to ‘Interstellar’
• Astronaut Chris Hadfield debunks space myths 
• What I learned from going blind in space | Chris Hadfield
• Chris Hadfield on 13 Moments That Changed His Life
• Chris Hadfield’s Life Advice Will Leave You SPEECHLESS - One of the Most Eye Opening Speeches

• An Astronaut’s Guide To Life in Space (playlist)

The Challenge

You commit to developing a Blueprint on a new book or a book you are revising over 10 weeks, beginning July 1. The challenge is open to anyone writing in any genre.

The Blueprint for a Book Challenge consists of 10* assignments that will help you take your book – whether it’s an amorphous idea, a few chapters, or a draft that isn’t coming together – to the next stage. The assignments will differ slightly for fiction, nonfiction, and memoir. They are based on Jennie Nash’s Blueprint method, which is the heart of the Author Accelerator Book Coach Certification program.

1. E.A. Deverell - FREE worksheets (characters, world building, narrator, etc.) and paid courses;
2. Hiveword - Helps to research any topic to write about (has other resources, too);
3. BetaBooks - Share your draft with your beta reader (can be more than one), and see where they stopped reading, their comments, etc.;
4. Charlotte Dillon - Research links;
5. Writing realistic injuries - The title is pretty self-explanatory: while writing about an injury, take a look at this useful website;
6. One Stop for Writers - You guys... this website has literally everything we need: a) Description thesaurus collection, b) Character builder, c) Story maps, d) Scene maps & timelines, e) World building surveys, f) Worksheets, f) Tutorials, and much more! Although it has a paid plan ($90/year | $50/6 months | $9/month), you can still get a 2-week FREE trial;
7. One Stop for Writers Roadmap - It has many tips for you, divided into three different topics: a) How to plan a story, b) How to write a story, c) How to revise a story. The best thing about this? It's FREE!
8. Story Structure Database - The Story Structure Database is an archive of books and movies, recording all their major plot points;
9. National Centre for Writing - FREE worksheets and writing courses. Has also paid courses;
10. Penguin Random House - Has some writing contests and great opportunities;
11. Crime Reads - Get inspired before writing a crime scene;
12. The Creative Academy for Writers - "Writers helping writers along every step of the path to publication." It's FREE and has ZOOM writing rooms;
13. Reedsy - "A trusted place to learn how to successfully publish your book" It has many tips, and tools (generators), contests, prompts lists, etc. FREE;
14. QueryTracker - Find agents for your books (personally, I've never used this before, but I thought I should feature it here);
15. Pacemaker - Track your goals (example: Write 50K words - then, everytime you write, you track the number of the words, and it will make a graphic for you with your progress). It's FREE but has a paid plan;
16. Save the Cat! - The blog of the most known storytelling method. You can find posts, sheets, a software (student discount - 70%), and other things;

• 0% inciting incident
• 0%-20% introduction in the world, ends with a point of no return
• 20% first plot point: the hero receives his marching orders
• 20%-50% response to the first plot point
• 35% first pinch point: reminder of the nature of the antagonistic force
• 50% midpoint: big fat plot twist that changes the hero’s AND reader’s experience
• 50%-80% attack: the stakes are higher now
• 65% second pinch point: again reminding the reader of the antagonistic forces at hand
• 80% second plot point: the final injection of new information into the story to give the hero everything she needs to become the primary catalyst in the story’s conclusion (no new information past this point)
• 80%-100% resolution + final conflict + return home

• Books about books and libraries
• Magic
• Quirky characters
• Intelligent, fast-paced and sometimes silly

• 0%: The hero does something magical without knowing how she did it. She discards it, because everybody knows it can’t have been real.
• 0%-20%: We see the daily life of the hero: she is unhappy because all she wants to do is read, but she is not allowed to. She reads in the dead of night and is punished for it by her evil stepcousin. She finds a book on magic.
• 20% It all clicks together: she can do magic!
• 20%-50% The daily life for the hero changes. Instead of reading all night, she practices magic. She now loves books even more. She has little victories over her evil stepcousin, but hasn’t won yet.
• 35% The evil stepcousin finds out that she can do magic and takes away the magic book.
• 50% She discovers she can do magic without the book.
• 50%-80% The hero is not the only one who is bullied by the evil stepcousin. Her younger cousin is a victim as well, and he doesn’t have magic to defend himself. The stakes are raised, this is bigger than herself now. The younger cousin also wants to read, so they have several bonding moments over reading.
• 65% The evil stepcousin hurts the younger cousin, he’s in a coma now.
• 80% The hero discovers the evil stepcousin could do all these evil things because he knows magic too.
• 80%-100% The hero confronts the evil stepcousin, fights him off, nearly loses but wins in the end. He gives up and releases his power over the younger cousin who wakes up from the coma.

• That’s more of a vague rule of thumb than a strict rule. If your scene needs to be longer or shorter, make it longer or shorter of course. My wip has some 2,300-word scenes as well.
• Having 1,000-word scenes does not mean I have 1,000-word chapters, that would be really short. I will divide my novel into chapters after I’m finished writing my first draft.
• For NaNoWriMo, maybe you could write scenes of 1,667 words, so you do one scene per day. A 50,000-word novel has 30 scenes of 1,667 words. Inciting incident is at scene 1, first plot point at scene 6, first pinch point at scene 11, midpoint at scene 15, second pinch point at scene 20, second plot point at scene 24 and scene 30 is your last scene. That’s just an idea, you got to see what works for you.

1. 101 Ways to Break your Character's (and Reader's) heart by @emswritingprompts
2. Injured & Hurt/Comfort Prompts + Dialogues by @delilahfairchild
3. A Bunch of Different Dialogue Prompts #16 by @skriveting
4. Angst Dialogue Prompts(Mostly break up and relationship) by @hollandsmushroom
5. Parents x Child prompts by @promptandstuff
6. Heartbroken Dialogue Prompts by @palettes-and-prompts
7. Angst by @wrting-prompts
8. Prompts List (150) by @sapphicwhxre
9. Dialogue That Gets Scarier When Trapped In A Hug by @thatostrichwriter
10. Question Ideas #11 by @love-me-a-good-prompt
11. 10 Enemies to Lovers Prompts by @person-1n-progress
12. 500 Followers Mega Prompt List by @prompts-for-every-need
13. Amelia's Prompt List by @maybanksslut
14. Olivia Rodrigo Sentence Starter (i found this one so creative) by @hoesresources
15. Hero x Villain Prompts: Mega *Flirty* Dialogue Edition by @creweemmaeec11
16. Enemies to Lovers Prompt List by @tommymcartney

1. actions have consequences. things that your characters do inevitably can affect other people around them. what might they have done in the past that could come back and serve as an obstacle? or, maybe, what could they do now that could possibly raise the stakes just a little bit more?
2. subplots! be mindful of the subplots you’re adding - but sometimes it might be a good idea to include one if your plot is feeling a little bit empty. not only can it tie back into the overarching struggle, but it could also serve as a way to explore one of your characters or points further.
3. character exploration. get to know your characters a little bit better! let your readers find out something new. connecting and understanding the people within your story is important if you want your readers to grow attached to them.
4. world exploration. similar to the previous point, with the addition of creating a greater sense of familiarity of the circumstances that your story is taking place in. remember that nobody else knows the world of your wip as well as you do - illustrate it even further so everyone else can grasp it even better.
5. let your characters bond! maybe there’s a lull in the plot. if your characters have the chance to take a breather and get to know the people around them, let them! it might help flesh out or even realistically advance their relationships with each other.