6 Great Places to Get Feedback on Your Writing

I previously wrote about places to get feedback and give reviews to other writers in '5 Alternative Sites to Visit After Triggerstreet', after the Triggerstreet website was discontinued. However now some of those sites are no longer in operation.

Here are some other great places I have tapped into for reading our fellow writer's work and giving feedback, as well as places to submit our own work for peer review.

• Talentville:Talentville is an online community specifically created to give a voice to screenwriters and playwrights everywhere who may lack insider connections but still share the dream of being produced. By bringing together writers from all over the world in a collaborative environment, by banding together as a whole to help each member be the best that they can be, they aim to create not just an online community but in fact a city of writers, where each member can work on their craft, gain valuable exposure and ultimately benefit from their own hard work.
  
• Create50: Create50 is an initiative and creative process that platforms the work of emerging screenwriters, filmmakers, short story writers and allied artists. They want to get YOUR work out there and seen by the public AND the people who matter within creative industries. And they also want everyone to benefit from the collaborative process that Create50 offers so they can learn more about their art, craft and creative discipline.
  
• NYC Midnight: Since 2002, NYC Midnight has hosted hundreds of inspiring competitions for storytellers around the world.  Participants are challenged to create original stories, screenplays, or films using assigned elements under time constraints. There is a section on the forum open for providing reviews of submitted work.
  
• Amazon Studios: Amazon Studios is developing feature films and episodic series in a new way, one that's open to great ideas from creators—and audiences—around the world. You can review works that have been submitted through the Amazon Studios forum.
  
• WeBook: They bring together tens of thousands of writers, published authors, avid readers and almost 100 established literary agents, to create an energetic hub of activity where talented writing is celebrated and undiscovered gems can be rooted out and polished into literary diamonds.  They do this because we want to give talented writers a genuine opportunity to be celebrated by readers who care, readers who love to help and readers who can encourage WEbook’s community to strive towards literary perfection.
  
• Writers Cafe: WritersCafe.org is an online writing community where writers can post their work, get reviews, befriend other writers, and much more..

Also Christopher Felden put together a very comprehensive list of places to submit and share, as well as review, in his article 'Free Critiques'.

How to Write a Short Story

Getting started in Flash Fiction and writing prompts, I often get bogged down in ... getting started. I start writing, like a pantser, and find myself unfocused and concerned that the narrative is not developing. So I've brought together some good suggestions for how to get started on a short story.

How To Outline A Short Story - For Beginners

Outline a Short Story in Seven Steps

7 Steps to Write a Short Story

How to Properly Outline a Short Story

How to Write a Short Story

Morning Pages

Oliver Burkeman recently wrote in The Guardian about how he was won over to the practice of Morning Pages.

5 Alternative Sites to Visit After Triggerstreet

The great site, Triggerstreet, is being shut down. Triggerstreet has been a great place for sharing creative works (stories, screenplays, films) and getting feedback. It was set up well to make sure you had to put in an effort to provide accurate feedback, and if you wanted feedback on your stuff then you had to help others first. Sadly I learned today that it will be going off-line.

Here are some alternatives to go to:

• Zoetrope Virtual Studio Home
• Scribophile
• Critique Circle
• Script Frenzy
• SimplyScripts

7 Tools to Help Keep You Writing

Cory Mandell, who teaches screenwriting at the UCLA extension Writer's program, sent out a newsletter update with a great list of ways to charge up creativity and dive into writing.

1. Make your goals public. Set a writing schedule and send it to some friends and/or fellow writers. Promise to check in with them on a weekly basis to update them on how you're doing. Being accountable to others can go a long way in helping us stay on track.
2. Consider employing the Kurosawa Method, especially for those of you with particularly hectic schedules.
3. Try using the Breaking the Glass Exercise, it's an effective weapon in the fight against resistance and fear.
4. The Jerry Seinfeld Chain has helped many of my students stay on track.
5. If Facebook, email or some other internet siren-song is your procrastination drug of choice, you might want to try a program that limits access during scheduled writing times. I know several working writers who use the app Selfcontrol.
   
6. If you haven't read The War of Art, I'd highly recommend doing so. 
    
7. This might be a bit extreme, but I know writers who put some money on the line at stickK in order to have a tangible incentive to get those pages done.

30 Tips for Writing a Book in 30 Days

Writer's Digest has a great post with tons of links for tips to either keep up the writing momentum or jump start your creativity. The article is 30 Tips for Writing a Book in 30 Days.

21 Fast Hacks to Fuel Your Story With Suspense

The Writer's Digest has a great guest article from Elizabeth Sims called 21 Hacks to Fuel Your Story Suspense. This is a great collection and terrific resource to turn to.

10 Free Online Creative Writing Courses

Here are free online creative writing courses that I found in my web search

3 Cool Online Novel Writing Tools in Time for NaNo

Novel Writing Month is just around the corner and I've been checking out some software and sites to help keep this year's efforts on track. Here are three online novel writing sites that you can use to keep writing anywhere.

HiveWord
They  call it an online fiction organizer, which is really a web-based story organizer that is easy to use. It provides quick and easy outlining of scenes, characters, settings and plotlines, and generates terrific compilation lists of the same. In addition, Hiveword stores your work online for you in a private account.

In the creator of Hiveword own words, he says "Hiveword tracks scenes, characters, settings, plot lines, POV, etc., in a simple-to-use interface. Hiveword is purposefully built just for novel organization so it already speaks your language and is optimized for the task. Unlike a spreadsheet, for example, it makes sorting and filtering scenes super easy."
Link: https://hiveword.com/

LitLift
LitLift is free. It was created with NaNo in mind. It is a place to keep track of everything about your novel, from character descriptions to settings, to chapters and scenes in the sequence they ought to happen.

The creators describe LitLift as a way "to help the world expand free thought, and in particular, share those thoughts, stories, writings, musings, etc. in a simply, easy-to-use, FREE application to 1) help develop and organize your writings, 2) collaborate and enhance your writing skills and 3) share your writing with others. Please note our application is most thoroughly tested using Chrome and IE, so for now we generally recommend using one of those browsers."
Link: http://www.litlift.com/

NowNovel
Now Novel provides a process that gives you a blueprint for writing your novel. It's can help get you  to be a novelist. Its personable, hands-on and step-by-step approach as well as its integrated social structure serve to separate it from the crowd, but not necessarily a better option.

Now Novel explains how it works: "The first three sections of Now Novel are entirely free: you can create your mood, find your central idea and test that it is definitely the right one. Once you pay a monthly subscription fee, you get access to the entire process, which includes finding your story type, plot, setting and character details (all very in-depth) as well as a guided process (called the Skeleton) for actually writing your novel once you have all the ingredients."
Link: http://www.nownovel.com/

150 Story Ideas

The Blacklist has a great new page compiling all the story ideas they have been sharing.

It is a 150 story ideas.

Plot the Story in One Shot

This is a nice visual aid that encapsulates the beats of story, showing the arc of the plot. This can help keep you on course.

(Found on the blog Write Learn Create Connect )

Boiling Story Down to the Bare Bones

I saw this breakdown recently in giving guidance for how to put a logline together. Then as I looked at this, it really made me feel like this is a good guide for help to pull a story together and ask the right questions up front. It isn't too big of a checklist. It is compact to the point and gets you thinking in the right direction.


WHO
Who is it about?
(two or three words that describe main character in a way that is relevant to this story.)
Something descriptive of who main character is, in the context of this story. For example: "Young Woman" is far too generic.

GOAL
What is the goal?
(something SPECIFIC that we can identify and understand)
For example: Something more specific, then just "seeking a better life". Nearly everyone seeks (or at least wants) a better life.
What does the main character spend the majority of the movie doing?

PROBLEM
What stands in his way?
(something SPECIFIC that we can identify and understand)
What actively prevents the main character from attaining the goal?

STAKES
What happens if he fails?
(something SPECIFIC that we can identify and understand)

5 Ways to Increase Writing Productivity

Donna Gambale, Philadelphia-based YA writer, shares 5 opportunities to brainstorm on projects  to keep it fresh and allow you to progress more rapidly when you sit down to write.

1. Driving
2. Doing Chores
3. Falling Asleep
4. Cooking
5. Waiting

The full list of opportunities is described in the Writer's Digest article 5 OPPORTUNITIES TO INCREASE YOUR WRITING PRODUCTIVITY (WITHOUT ACTUALLY WRITING)

The Cure for Writer's Block

Give yourself permission to write...garbage

Finding Story Goals

In setting out the plot, we need to think about the main character.
What does the character want? What is the character's goal, the long term goal?
The character is striving toward something. It should be a measurable goal, achievable goal, though difficult.
The character's goal is something that the character is passionate about.

So I started banging my head trying to find the story goal that I would use. It is hard to get it out. Then I started looking at these lists to pick one.

• How to Create a Plot Outline in Eight Easy Steps
• The Story Goal: Your Key To Creating A Solid Plot Structure  
• Plot Goals Seeing Is Believing

Story Goals vs Plot Goals: There's a difference between story goals and plot goals. Story goals are the larger thematic goals that usually describe the character growth or the idea behind the tale. They're more conceptual, and work as a guide in determining the types of plot goals your protagonist will encounter. Plot goals are the physical things your protagonist does to achieve those more lofty story goals.
Story goal: To find love again after a bad breakup. (this is what the story is about)
Plot goal: To go to the museum and talk to cute guys. (this is one thing the protagonist does during the story)

From Goal - Conflict - Stakes. Why You Need All Three 

 

Do you have more ways to find a story goal?

4 Terrific Places to Share Writing and Critique Work

Here are some of the forums I have found to share writing and critique peer works.

• Scribophile
• Triggerstreet Labs
• StoryWrite
• Talentville

What sites have you found for sharing your writing and offering critiques.

Writer's Knowledge Base

Elizabeth Craig and Mike Fleming have come up with The Writer's Knowledge Base (WKB).

This is a searchable collection of articles that are highly relevant to writers. The articles are diverse and cover such topics as the craft of writing, getting published, promotion, etc.

One of the problems of trying to find industry-related information on your own in a lack of searchable database. Unless you go to an individual agent or editor blog and search on each of their sites, you’re going to get very spotty results on a Google search.

The WKB carries out Google-like searches against Elizabeth's hand-picked articles on writing. Because of this, all of the results are on topic and much more likely to be relevant to exactly what you're looking for.

It is better than Google at finding writing resources, since it presents you with random articles from the thousands of links in the repository, allowing you to find interesting articles "by accident."

You can find The Writer's Knowledge Base (WKB) at  http://hiveword.com/wkb.

Testing Morning Pages

I recently came across the tool called Morning Pages. I have been struggling with getting myself to write, and to tap into a deeper, creative potential.

Mind Maps Tool - Text 2 Mind Map

Found this great online tool for mind maps. It is called Tex 2 Mind Map. It is very easy to use, intuitive and quickly puts your mind map up in a graphically convenient way.

Check it out at http://www.text2mindmap.com/