View Post

Write Backstory With Confidence Course

In Guest Articles, RWA Academy by RWA Blog Coordinator1 Comment

How to weave in the past without information dump telling. The art of integrating backstory seamlessly into a ficton narrative is vital to show casing how your character formed their world views, beliefs and desires. Understanding the purpose of backstory A character’s past isn’t just about providing context to who they were as a child, it’s about breathing life into who they are now. It’s the key to unlocking their motivations, fears and desires. Effective backstory humanises our characters in order to make them more believable and relatable to our readers. It provides the all-important why to every action they …

View Post

Aussie Audiobook Production? Easier than you think! By Amy Soakes.

In Guest Articles, Publishing Industry, RWA Academy by RWA Blog CoordinatorLeave a Comment

Online publishing has thrown open the door for authors everywhere to launch their work to the world, without the need for a traditional publishing deal. This free-flowing market has nurtured authorship in an unprecedented way, and – importantly for us Aussies – removed the ‘tyranny of distance’, allowing direct access to the major markets of the US and UK. And we’ve taken to it like ducks to water, happily splashing around in the same pool of publishing opportunity as our cross-ocean counterparts. But while Aussie authors have ridden waves of publishing success through text, our uptake of audio has languished. …

View Post

How to tap back into your creativity with Sarah Gates

In Creative Writing, Guest Articles, RWA Academy by RWA Blog CoordinatorLeave a Comment

I teach writing workshops in school and libraries. Sometimes it’s the same workshop (with just a few variations) that I’m asked to deliver to 13-year-olds as to adults. I’ve observed that something happens to our creativity when we hit adulthood. Kids and teens will throw out the wildest of ideas. Once you break through the shyness, it’s a free-for-all. When I ask a group of adults in a writing workshop to throw ideas out, a silence falls. The ideas tend to come slowly, in dribs and drabs. They often stay within the box. Adults will say things to me like, …

View Post

The Number One Concept to Stop Confusion About Showing

In Creative Writing, Guest Articles, RWA Academy by RWA Blog CoordinatorLeave a Comment

‘Show don’t tell’ is one of the most worrisome writing guidelines ever created, but it’s also essential to modern authors. Finding the right balance of showing and telling in your story is like patting your head and rubbing your belly while balancing on one leg at the top of a pole in a river full of crocodiles. (And I never exaggerate.) Authors get themselves tied up in knots over showing and telling, but the good news is if you take a deep breath, let go of the minutiae that are bogging you down and remember one simple and liberating concept, …

View Post

Kickstart Your Novel Dream

In Creative Writing, RWA Academy by RWA Blog CoordinatorLeave a Comment

By Leeanne Vernon In some ways, I feel like a fraud teaching this course – I’m yet to have a romance novel published, despite trying. That’s not very encouraging if you’re thinking about joining my How to Kick Start your Novel sessions but let me put your mind at ease. I’m an awesome writing coach. Several people I’ve coached have gone on to publish their books. One young man wrote about his travelling adventures including ending up incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay detention centre. Tim left school in Year 10 and knew nothing about writing, but he was passionate about his …

View Post

The Secrets of Show Don’t Tell

In Creative Writing, RWA Academy by RWA Blog CoordinatorLeave a Comment

By Samantha Marshall Whether you’re an aspiring writer finding your feet, an emerging author with a couple of books under your belt or an established author with a career spanning years, chances are you’ve heard the phrase ‘Show, Don’t Tell.’ Perhaps you’ve submitted a manuscript for either assessment or editing, and received feedback highlighting elements of telling in your writing, with the request to show instead. Or maybe you attended a talk with an author you admire, and they encourage their audience to show instead of tell wherever possible. You may even have come across the advice in craft books, …

View Post

Is Treating Writing Like a Business Holding You Back?

In Guest Articles, RWA Academy by RWA Blog CoordinatorLeave a Comment

Shape Your Ideal Author Career workshop with Sandy Vaile You may have heard over and over again that you need to treat your fiction writing like a business or you’ll never be a successful author, but what you don’t often hear is that doing that could be the very thing holding you back. Say what? If you haven’t had your first book published yet, then I believe focusing on the business of writing is wasting writing time, and we all know what a precious resource time is. Building a platform, blogging and posting on social media regularly, getting your branding …