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WELCOME TO ANNE BELLOWS BOOKS
The Writing Tips Blog of Many Colors
The new home of my Tumblr blog! Here you can find my curated tips on the writing process. Everything from worldbuilding and character design to story structure, themes, and tackling those tough tropes and archetypes, with a few top ten lists sprinkled about.
Take A Risk and Don’t Write a Chosen One
This trope stands the test of time for some very good reasons: Audience wish-fulfillment as they live vicariously through the hero,...
Top 10 Narrative Pet Peeves
For now In one way or another, these all boil down to “Author took a shortcut and I absolutely noticed”. In other words, most of these...
A Case Against “Redemption = Death”
“Redemption = Death” is, in my opinion, one of the laziest “telling not showing” cop-outs you can write, and it happens over and over and...
Writing Tone #2: Avoiding Manufactured Sincerity
There’s a scene in season 5 of My Hero Academia where two beloved teachers have been brought to some high security prison to interrogate...
What No one Tells You about Writing Fantasy, #2!
Fantasy knows no bounds, it can encompass all other genres within it. You can write a fantastical murder mystery, fantasy horror, fantasy...
10 Character Dynamics the World Needs More of
Me handing out character dynamics like free samples at the Mall Food Court: “Take one! Or two! You’ll love it!” I don’t care how many...
What No One Tells You About Writing Fantasy
Every author has their preferred genres. I love fantasy and sci-fi, but began with historical fiction. I hated all the research that...
How to Subvert Expectations Without Compromising The Story
Whoo boy, is this a contentious topic with the last few blockbuster franchises. To “subvert expectations” is to do the opposite of...
POVS and Past vs Present Tense (Or, the Pros and Cons of Limiting your Narrator)
Today we’re looking at the pros and cons of the different points of view through which you can tell your story, but full disclosure,...
Writing Exposition (Or Turning a Textbook into a Story)
Exposition concerns every facet of your work from character descriptions, backstories, and relationships, to world history, geography,...
Plot Holes and How to Fill Them (Or, The Hidden Potential in Your Mistakes)
“But why didn’t they just do that earlier!” “You can time travel – so time travel!” “Doesn’t X have Y spell? Why aren’t they using it to...
Writing Tone in Fiction (Or, Pacing your Story, Part 2)
Tone, and how abruptly you change it, how radically you change it, and how you break it whether on purpose or on accident says a lot...
Humanizing Your Characters (And Why You Should)
To humanize a character is not to contort an irredeemable villain into the warped funhouse mirror reflection of a hero in the last 30...
Character Descriptions 101 (Or, the ugly truth about what really matters)
A lot of the appeal of being able to write your own book is being able to take all the characters you dream about and put them onto paper...
Writing with Executive Dysfunction (or how to lower the barrier of entry)
So you want to write a book, but all you have is a cool one-liner, a niche super power you want to explore, and the blurry image of a...
Pacing your Story (Or, How to Avoid the "Suddenly...!")
Arguably the most important lesson all writers need to learn, even for those who don’t give a damn about themes and motifs and a moral...
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