It’s my birthday week!!! Birthdays are such a great opportunity to reflect and be grateful, and I hope you realize just how grateful I am for you! By the time you see this, I’ll be partying at Disney World, but instead of leaving you without a video this week, I decided to share one of […]
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When we talk about writing to deadlines or a big, timed event like NaNoWriMo, we often spend most of our time talking about plot, ideas, and scenes. Those things are important, of course, but there’s more to success sometimes than just prepping your novel. What about prepping your life for a big deadline? Today on […]
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It’s that lovely time of year where writers come together to start preparing for National Novel Writing Month. Even if NaNoWriMo isn’t your thing, I hope these new videos will help spark something for you as you prepare and plan your next novel! Planning Your Novel What Type Of Writer Are You? The first thing […]
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Sometimes, the best way to spark our own creative ideas is to consume and analyze the stories of other authors! Today, I’m sharing my brand new story inspiration journal where I’ll be tracking the stories I watch, play, or listen to and all my thoughts along the way. Setting up my story inspiration journal I’m […]
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I’m starting a new book! Except that it’s not a brand new book. It’s an older book that I started back in 2019 and never got a chance to finish. I currently have a handful of plotting notes and just over 20,000 words of completed draft. Even though I set this book aside in 2019 […]
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Welcome to the fifth and final episode in our series on Writing Great Scenes. So far, we’ve learned about the main elements of a scene, how to write a character’s goal or desire, how to write conflict, and how to structure your scenes and create scene cards from your notes. If you missed the first […]
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Our discussion of how to write great scenes continues today with Episode 4 of the series, where we’ll be going over scene structure. This is really where everything we’ve talked about so far comes together to create the true building blocks of your entire novel or story. If you missed the first three parts, I’ll […]
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Welcome back to Episode 3 in our “Writing Great Scenes” series. Last week, we discussed the importance of each scene having a point-of-view character with a clear goal or desire. This week, we’re going to talk about what I feel is the most important aspect of writing an engaging scene: conflict. If you missed the […]
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In all good scenes, your point-of-view character will have a goal or desire. Something your character wants. Today, we’re diving into character arcs, goals, and how these work together to create an engaging scene for your readers. This is part 2 of my series on great scenes. To check out the first video and post, go […]
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As writers, we hear a lot about plot structure, but in my opinion, we don’t hear nearly enough about scenes. In truth, scenes are really where the story happens. So, if you’ve ever struggled with figuring out what happens in your scenes or taking the idea of plot and fleshing it out into individual scenes, […]
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I have been self-publishing my books since 2010, and in that time, I've sold well over half a million copies of my books. I'm not a superstar or a huge bestseller, but I have built an amazing career that brings me great joy. Here at Heart Breathings, I hope to help you find that same level of success. Let's do this.
