I know a lot of aspiring authors who think writing is easy. They dabble in writing under the illusion that they can write a great work anytime they choose to. This attitude will forever condemn them to the ranks of the aspiring.

Fortunately we seem to have writers with more fortitude than that at Review Fuse. I reviewed a first chapter today that exemplifies how an author should write:

Books aren’t written — they’re rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it. — Michael Crichton

The story I reviewed was titled The Distance of the Heart by peacemusictwloha13. This young author has rewritten this chapter several times and submitted it for review at least 3 times. This chapter has transformed from a fairly dull story about a day in the life of a teen to an engaging chapter that leaves the reader wanting for more. If you look over the various reviews of and revisions to this story you will be able to see how she transformed this work by rewriting it several times.

If you would like some help finding the fortitude to keep rewriting your works please join the Review Fuse online writing community.

Jacob

We are pleased to announce the beta version of private writing groups. You can now create or join writing groups to share your work with a subset of the Review Fuse Community that is focused on a specific topic. You can also move your face-to-face writing groups online for those weeks you just can’t find the time to get together.  You can create groups that are publicly accessible or private groups that require an invitation and a password to join.  All groups also have the option for the moderator to approve all members who wish to join. You will be able to make sure the group remains true to what you need it to be.

We appreciate all the suggestions we received on how to implement the writing groups and welcome any additional feedback while using this new feature.   Our goal for these writing groups is to help you:

• Receive quality reviews from peers you trust
• Learn how to critique work by following our guided reviews
• Save time and Gas by moving your personal writing groups online
• Mostly importantly, to improve your writing with the feedback and help of your peers

Join Review Fuse to take advantage of our new writing groups and to help us improve services available to writers.

A great story stands on three legs: character development, plot, and setting. You should tailor the strength of these elements to the length of the story. Longer works need more development then shorter works. Each of these three elements should be equally strong otherwise your story will wobble on uneven legs.

The setting of a story consists of the time, place, circumstances the characters encounter, and small details of their environment. If you under develop your setting your story will appear generic and be very dull to read.

When initially developing the setting start by focusing on these four areas:

• The opening of your story should reveal the when and where the story takes place. ‘When’ would include the date or approximate date of the story.  ‘Where’ includes which city the story is set in. The plot should be affected and partially driven by the setting. A story set in during the winter in London should be different than one set in Jerusalem during the summer, even if the plot is similar in both works.
• Characters should be engaged in simultaneous things. This can include things like work, child care, falling in love, grocery shopping, or dance classes. This helps to complete the setting by providing the character with a believable and well round world to interact with. The activities the characters engage in, how well they perform, and how they react should reveal facets about the characters personalities to the readers.
• Change something about your characters setting so that is it fundamentally different from the world your readers live in. You can do this by either having your character live a different life than your reader or by changing something in your reader’s world such as melted polar icecaps, a nuclear holocaust, the collapse of world governments, or ban everyone from reading books.
• Suggest details of the setting rather than trying to explain details. For example, try saying it is winter by saying “he had to carefully navigate the icy snow covered roads.”  Suggesting is more powerful than explaining because it allows your reader to paint the setting in their minds eye based on their experiences. This creates a much more vivid setting for the reader than any author can create by trying to describe all of the details.

Would you like to know how well you have developed your setting? Submit your story to Review Fuse and let our writing community critique your work.

Jacob

What makes you keep reading a story? I keep reading a story if I am waiting for a conflict to be resolved, a mystery to be solved, or to see the fairytale ending. Without a clear well defined plot you cannot hook your readers and keep them reading. I have recently reviewed several works that did not have clear plots. These stories had a lot of adventure and conflict but at the end of the story I couldn’t identify what the plot was. Some of these works had 3 or 4 mini plots but not an overarching goal linking them together.

The plot is all the events in a story related to the achievements of the protagonist, primarily consisting of the conflicts the main character faces in opposition to the antagonist. The plot should have a clearly defined beginning, middle, and end. The beginning should give readers a chance to learn about the characters, the setting, and the problems/conflict that needs to resolve. The middle should contain the majority of the action and reveal why the problem cannot be easily solved. The end is where the protagonist finally resolves the problems or conflict.

You can start developing a great plot by developing a believable character with a problem that has to be solved by the character’s bravery and cleverness. Truly engaging works often have the main character try and fail several times before solving the problem or resolving the conflict.

Would you like to know how well you have developed your plot? Submit your story to Review Fuse and let our writing community critique your plot.

Jacob

A good friend of mine summed up copyright law with these words: Copyright is about being able to prove you created the original work first.

Copyright law is a murky area. One of the best ways to clear the copyright cobwebs from your mind is to visit U.S. Copyright Office website. If you are new to copyright I recommend starting with the Copyright Basics, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), and How to Register a Word. For our members publishing outside the US we would love to hear about what you have learned about international copyright law and issues.

Review Fuse allows member to submit their work for peer critique either publicly or privately. If you submit your work privately it preserves your first rights of publication. Would you like to submit your work for peer review?

Jacob

I am excited to announce a feature that a number of you have asked for. A summarized printable view of the reviews you have received, click on the image to see an example. We appreciate all of your suggestions for this feature that we did not think of on our own. Without your input we might not have created this feature which has proved so useful to Review Fuse authors. If you have not yet, signup to receive peer critiques like this one.

Private writing groups is getting really close to being released as well. There are a few tricky things to work out with it, but we are well on our way and excited for this too. I will let everyone know when it is released. Thank you all again for the suggestions on what we can improve. Please continue to let us know what you need, we will definitely do our best to get it for you.

Steve

Here is a list of free online writing courses. I have not completed any of these courses yet so please let me know what you think of these courses. Writing is not easy. Any new writer should start by taking time to really understand his/her craft. While you are here, feel free to join Review Fuse and submit your stories for peer critique.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Introduction to Fiction
• Writing and Reading Short Stories
• Advanced Essay Workshop

Open University

• Fiction Writing Course
• Descriptive Writing Course
• Essay Writing Course

University of Utah

• Introduction to Shakespeare
• Introduction to Creative Writing
  

Western Governors University

• Rhetorical and Critical Writing
• Language and Communications
• Literature Course - Parts I and II

Purdue University

• Proofreading Your Writing
• Conquering the Comma

E-Zine University

• Writing Clearly and Effectively
• Conquering Confusing Words
• Quick Ways to Clean Up Your Writing

Wikiversity

• Narrative Dialog Editing

Enjoy the classes,

Jacob

Villains come in many forms such as monsters, people, aliens, mental disorders, ghosts, and relatives. Villains provide the conflict a story needs to be entertaining and interesting. Here are the top 10 ways to create a truly vile villain.

1. Perform the introduction and follow up interviews with the villain. In order to develop villains that are credible, believable, and logical, you must know them as well as you know your hero.
2. Thoroughly explain throughout your story the villain’s motives and why he feels his actions are justified and rational.
3. Explain your villain physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Make him a three-dimensional and complete person.
4. Show your readers that the villain has the power and resources to destroy the hero. Make the villain very threatening.
5. Do not allow the villain to see himself as evil, insane, stupid, or whiny. People don’t typically view themselves this way, and it will destroy the villain’s credibility if he views himself this way.
6. Keep the plot uncertain. Never make it look like either side is definitely going to win. Suspense intensifies a story and pulls the reader in more effectively than any other tool.
7. Use the villain to showcase the hero’s qualities. The perceived power of the hero is strongly correlated to the villainy demonstrated by the villain.
8. Strengthen the villain by giving him a chance to present his case while demonstrating his intelligence, logic, and adaptability.
9. Give the villain traits most people hate or loathe about themselves or society at large. This allows the reader to understand and relate to the villain’s motives.
10. Give the villain normal or even likable traits that are demonstrated by average people. Doing so will strengthen the plot and the characters by creating an inner conflict within the reader who despises what the villain is doing, while at the same time relating to and possibly even liking him.

Do you want to know how vile your villains are? Join Review Fuse and let our community critique your work.

Jacob

Bad dialog plagues most beginning writers. The following top 10 list will help you write good dialog.

1. Start a new paragraph every time the speaker changes. Never have two people speak in the same paragraph.
2. Make sure the reader knows who is speaking.
3. Make the speech sound like normal conversation.
4. Be concise; cut out words that do not serve the conversation’s purpose.
5. Break up the dialog with action, as readers can be overloaded with too much dialog.
6. Avoid profanity, slang, and stereotypes. Each of these types of speech will date your writing and help it quickly go out of style.
7. Use correct punctuation and mechanics.
8. Use quotation marks to indicate words which are spoken by characters.
9. Read good and bad dialog to determine what works and what doesn’t.
10. Reveal new facets about your character through the dialog.

Are you curious about well you have developed your dialog? Upload your story and let the Review Fuse community critique your work.

Jacob

Developing characters is difficult. Here are the top 10 things you have to get right in order to develop great characters.

1. Characters must act naturally within the context of the story and setting.
2. Readers must be able to identify with and admire the characters.
3. The protagonist must be heroic, logical, have common sense, face complicated problems, and have worthy goals.
4. Characters need to struggle to overcome conflict. Characters that sometimes fail are easy to identify with. Conflict is the backbone of a story, so make your characters really struggle.
5. Characters should be well rounded physically, emotionally, and spiritually. If any of these three dimensions are missing the characters will feel either hollow or forced.
6. Possess universal traits such as love, hate, fear, guilt, grief, and embarrassment. Everyone possesses these traits which makes it easy to relate with and understand characters with these traits.
7. A character needs flaws. Always doing the right thing for the right reason is boring and predictable. Perfect people are easy to resent and hard to love.
8. The protagonist’s greatest weakness needs to be hammered on throughout the story. This creates both internal and external conflict and establishes the plot.
9. Never let the hero back down. Despite their weaknesses heroes always find a way to face their fears.
10. Make each character a truly unique individual. Give them quirks and provide details that give us insights into who the characters really are.

If you wonder how well you have developed your characters please join our writing community and let us critique your work.

Jacob