Blog - Page 6 of 6 - Aspiring Writer Academy

10 Questions to Ask When Creating Characters for Your Story

By Darlene Panzera | January 25, 2021 |

You have decided that you want to delve into the world of fiction and write a story. Great! You even have an awesome story idea that you’ve been playing around with in your head. Great! Now…what kind of characters could be in a story like this? And most importantly, who will be the protagonist—the main character of your story?

Macro Edits: Looking at Your Story as a Whole

By Darlene Panzera | January 23, 2021 |

Macro editing looks at the whole story from beginning to end to see if the story makes sense, the characters are consistent with their personality, the plot structure is set up properly and functions to push the story forward. #Writing #writingfiction #WritingTips #Writer #Writers #WritersLife #WritingAdvice #writingtip #writingtips #GetPublished

After you have finished writing the first full draft of your novel, you may want to set it aside for a few weeks before going straight into edits to give your brain time to refresh. Giving yourself time to distance from the story allows you to come back to it with a different perspective. This is exactly what you will need for the first round of revision—macro edits.

Writing Fiction: How To Keep Track of Time in Your Story

By Darlene Panzera | November 30, 2020 |

Have you ever read a story where the timeline didn’t make sense?
When writing a fictional story, using a ‘story calendar’ will help you keep track of time between each of your scenes to avoid confusion and keep your story believable and accurate.

22 Great Tools and Resources for Writers

By Samantha Panzera | November 30, 2020 |

Hey writers! Right here we have gathered together 22 Great Tools and Resources for Writers. Many of these awesome tools and resources we use ourselves on this site and other websites we manage. We only share tools that we trust and believe are helpful for aspiring writers.

Basic Story Structure: How to Plot in 6 Steps

By Darlene Panzera | August 15, 2020 |

Plot is what happens when your main character moves through the sequence of interrelated scenes of your story. Now there are several instructors who teach various plotting structures, some simple and some more complex. At Aspiring Writer Academy, we have both. But to launch you in the right direction when you are still brainstorming, we created an easy 6-step template for popular fiction to help you grow that initial idea into a “working draft of a story.”

Before you sit down to write a story, you must first decide: What do you want to write about? And even more importantly—Why?

Behind the Scenes: Interview with the Authors of the “Sew in Love” Collection

By Darlene Panzera | July 20, 2020 |

Behind the Scenes: Interview with the Authors of the “Sew in Love” Collection.

Our Inspiration For Writing A Historical Novella Collection

By Darlene Panzera | July 14, 2020 |

Collaborating with other authors and writing novellas for a joint anthology is a great way to break into traditional publishing. Author Debby Lee and I (Darlene Panzera) had already been published with Barbour Publishing when we decided to bring in our good friend, Jacquolyn McMurray to create a novella collection.

Q & A with the authors of the Sew in Love Collection: Jacquolyn McMurray, Debby Lee, and Darlene Panzera.

Brainstorming Story Ideas: Where to Find Them

By Darlene Panzera | July 13, 2020 |

One of the top questions an author gets asked is: How do you come up with the ideas for your stories? In this blog post, we give you 3 useful resources and 3 Smart Writer Tips to help you find the inspiration you need to start writing fabulous fiction.

Why We Started Aspiring Writer Academy: Our Story

By Darlene Panzera | July 13, 2020 |

Hi, I’m Darlene Panzera, co-owner of Aspiring Writer Academy and I would like to share why my daughter, Samantha, and I started a blog on writing and publishing.