The Motivational Editor

Helping Writers Go from Unpublished to Published

How To Fail Miserably At Marketing While Still Having Wild Success

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Today’s post is from author Chad Campese. Chad is a father, husband, police officer, blogger, and author of the book Confession of a Christian Fraud. He holds a BA in Christian Counseling and psychology, is heavily involved in peer support and recovery when it comes to first responders, and is an expert in living his life and faith as a fraud. These days he simply relies on the leading of the Spirit as he tries to slowly and purposefully take life one day at a time.

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What Are Tropes and Should I Use Them?

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What do secret baby, amnesia, orphan, and billionaire have in common? They’re all tropes.

Have you heard of these things? Do you know what they are? I sure didn’t until recently.

I’d heard the word a lot over the past year, but despite doing some research, I hadn’t been able to get a grip on what the word really meant or how to apply it to my writing.

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Find New Readers Through Podcasts

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Image by Florante Valdez from Pixabay

Would you like to find new readers? How about a pool of 116 million people in the United States alone? If that’s not enough incentive, how about a worldwide pool of 383 million people?

How do you reach these wondrous potential readers? Through their ears. They’re podcast listeners!

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The Subtle Lie of Only One Person

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Dispelling the subtle lie of "if only one person is changed." You can reach the crowd.

Last month over at DebraLButterfield.com I spoke about some of the subtle lies Satan plants in our hearts without us even knowing it. And in actuality, I’m on a cleaning binge. I’m working to clean out the lies I have unwittingly embraced and that have kept me from enjoying the abundant life Jesus promised.

A lie I’d like to peel apart today is “If only one person is changed by __________, then it was worth all it.” You fill in the blank. Changed by:

  • The books I write
  • The blog posts I write
  • The prayers I utter
  • The time I spend leading and teaching a Bible study.

What would be on your list?

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5 Tips to Add Other Cultures to Your Story Without Leaving the Country

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Author L.A. Darroch

Today’s guest post is by author L.A. Darroch, a Christian author with a heart for writing about the persecuted church and other stories that touch the hearts of readers for God’s glory. She seeks to use her writing to encourage readers to “Speak Life.” She credits her late father with introducing her to a passion for reading. Darroch lives in Winnipeg, Canada, and is owned by a very smart cat named Bathsheba.

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How to Handle Footnotes and Endnotes

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Chicago Manual of Style formatting footnotes and endnotes

Footnotes and endnotes tend to be cumbersome for most writers. Most certainly, I keep my Chicago Manual of Style handy when I’m editing notes.

To avoid the weightiness of correct formatting, I like to cite my sources within the body of my text when I can. But I realize there is a time for notes.

Why Do I Need Footnotes or Endnotes?

The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition, says this: “Ethics, copyright laws, and courtesy to readers require authors to identify the sources of direct quotations or paraphrases and of any facts or opinions not generally known or easily checked.”

In other words, giving credit where credit is due. Using someone else’s words or ideas and claiming them as your own is called plagiarism—serious business that could land you in jail.

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Sentence Structure and How It Impacts Your Reader

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Sentence structure is a riveting subject, don’t you think so?

Okay, maybe not. Me either.

Let me ask you this instead: When you’re engrossed in a book, do you notice sentence structure? If you’re like me, you don’t notice it at all unless…it becomes monotonous.

Last month, I looked at pacing. In that post, I talked about how sentence length affects your story’s pacing. This month, I’ll examine actual sentence structure. No, this isn’t going to be a grammar lesson. Yes, I realize this may be boring, but it’s important. I’ll do my best to interject some humor.

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Pacing — What It Is and How to Manage It

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runners, pacing your story

“Pace yourself.”

In my running days in the Marine Corps, I heard this imperative regularly. Perhaps you’ve heard it too. It means managing how quickly or slowly you run your distance. If you plan to run a mile, you don’t run the whole distance at a sprint like you would the 100-yard dash.

You can apply this same principle in establishing the pacing of your story and each scene. Not every scene is a dash; not every scene is a slow walk. Over the full length of the story, the pace will vary. But your story must have a continuous forward progression.

“Nearly all narratives…require forward motion and change over time, whether that change occurs in the narrator/characters or in the reader’s perception of the narrator or characters.” ~ Laurie Alberts, Showing & Telling

We want to know the story is moving forward to an end result.

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