Category: Writers on Writing

Writers on Writing

Life after NaNoWriMo: How writers can keep the November momentum alive #WriteMo2025

Mandy Webster

Every November, countless writers have opened fresh documents, brewed extra coffee, and joined a global community all chasing the same goal—50,000 words in 30 days. For twenty-five years, the nonprofit behind National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) gave structure and camaraderie to this creative marathon. But when the organization officially shut down in April 2025 due to financial and operational challenges, many writers were left wondering: Now what?

Just because the NaNoWriMo website is gone, that doesn’t mean you can’t still write a novel this month!

The good news is that the spirit of NaNoWriMo doesn’t belong to any one website. It lives in the collective energy of writers everywhere who come together to create, share, and cheer one another on. November can still be your month to write boldly and build lasting creative habits—you just might have to do it a little differently this year.

Continue reading “Life after NaNoWriMo: How writers can keep the November momentum alive #WriteMo2025” →
Writers on Writing

Creepy characters we love to hate (and secretly can’t)

Mandy Webster

There’s something fascinating about a character who creeps you out, makes you uneasy, or shocks you with their actions—but somehow, you can’t bring yourself to hate them completely. These are the villains and morally gray characters who blur the line between right and wrong, forcing readers to wrestle with their own sense of judgment. They unsettle us, intrigue us, and make our hearts race, which is why they are perfect companions for October reading.

Sure, she’s pretty. But there’s also something uncanny about her. Do you trust her?

In thrillers and suspense novels, some characters are written to be frighteningly clever, ruthless, or unpredictable, yet their motivations or circumstances make their actions feel, at least in part, understandable. In How to Kill Men and Get Away with It by Katy Brent, the protagonist’s cunning and dark choices are chilling, but her perspective invites empathy and even admiration for her ingenuity. Bad Men by Julie Mae Cohen and This Girl’s a Killer by Emma C. Wells present characters whose morally questionable or violent actions are layered with complexity—making you uneasy, yet unable to fully condemn them.

Continue reading “Creepy characters we love to hate (and secretly can’t)” →
Writers on Writing

The psychology of fear in literature and why we can’t look away #spooktober

Mandy Webster

There’s something irresistible about a story that makes our hearts race and our palms sweat, even when we know we’re perfectly safe on our couch. Fear in literature taps into a deep part of our psyche, and understanding why we seek it out can make us appreciate the stories that haunt us even more.

Why do we love to read spooky stories, especially in October?

Fear works in books because it connects to emotions we experience in real life: anxiety, uncertainty, and the unknown. When we read a thriller like Her One Regret by Donna Freitas, we feel the suspense of a character navigating danger and deception, our brains mirroring their tension as if it were our own. Horror, on the other hand, like Salt Bones by Jennifer Givhan or Something in the Walls by Daisy Pearce, introduces us to scenarios that feel uncanny or impossible. Our minds grapple with the unknown, the supernatural, and the morally unsettling, creating a lingering sense of dread.

Continue reading “The psychology of fear in literature and why we can’t look away #spooktober” →
Writers on Writing

The key difference between horror and thriller books that most readers miss

Mandy Webster

The line between horror and thriller fiction is thinner than most readers think. Both keep you turning pages late into the night, heart pounding and mind racing—but they do it for very different reasons. Understanding what separates them reveals not only why we read them, but why they haunt us in different ways.

Sometimes it’s hard to find the line between a thriller novel and a horror novel.

A thriller’s purpose is to thrill, to make readers feel a rush of danger and urgency. It’s about tension, pace, and cleverness—the satisfaction of watching a hero outthink or outrun the forces closing in. The threat is usually external and grounded in reality: a killer, a kidnapper, a conspiracy, or a psychological cat-and-mouse game. The pleasure comes from seeing order restored, justice served, or a mystery solved, even if the cost is high. Books like Keep This for Me by Jennifer Fawcett or Hannah Richell’s One Dark Night are perfect examples of thrillers that keep you on the edge of your seat, weaving suspense with high-stakes personal drama.

Continue reading “The key difference between horror and thriller books that most readers miss” →
Writers on Writing

I have a dream. And a goal. Lots of writing goals. But I need your help to get there.

Mandy Webster

I’ve been writing for a long time. I have published a handful of novels that honestly haven’t been widely read. It’s really hard to get people to read your books if you don’t have a big name or someone like Oprah or Reese or Jenna promoting your work. Sometimes, I can’t even give them away. Needless to say, I am not earning a living from my writing.

Before you start to feel too sorry for me, I must admit that I am no starving artist. At least not since I started working two full-time jobs (don’t worry, they’re cake jobs: it’s not as bad as it sounds). We are a dual income family, so we’re not exactly hard up for money. Unfortunately, both incomes must be earned by one person, me. I officially got my single-parent family out from under the poverty line about two years ago, and things have steadily improved for us since. Where I’m going with this is that money is no longer the issue, per se. But the time I am spending making money instead of writing is getting to be an issue.

Continue reading “I have a dream. And a goal. Lots of writing goals. But I need your help to get there.” →
Writers on Writing

How to write a hook that offers the promise your #novel will fulfill

Mandy Webster

English: The main screen of Albite READER 2
Do the first lines of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland work for you? | English: The main screen of Albite READER 2 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Author Dave King shared an interesting article yesterday on Writer Unboxed titled, Beyond the First Five Pages. In his post, he discusses the importance of writing a good hook that both draws the reader in and leads the reader properly into the rest of the story.

I’m only working on my second novel now (not counting the 872 false starts that I wrote before finally finishing something!), so I’m no expert. However, in my most-humble opinion, I think it is best to worry about your hook after the rest of the story has been written. Continue reading “How to write a hook that offers the promise your #novel will fulfill” →

Writers on Writing

How writing a novel is like putting a puzzle together #amwriting

Mandy Webster

What’s the first thing you do when you put a puzzle together?

I posed this question to my spring semester creative writing workshop on our last day of class. I was trying to get them to think about what comes next for them, now that they have all started writing their novels. I also asked the question on my Facebook page to see what answers non-writers might come up with. Only one of them came up with the answer I was looking for. I got a variety of responses to the question, including:

  • Find all the edge pieces
  • Look for the corners
  • Sort the pieces by color
  • Throw the puzzle in the garbage because puzzles suck!

Continue reading “How writing a novel is like putting a puzzle together #amwriting” →

Novel Writing, Writer's Block, Writers on Writing

Writing the boring: How to write transitional material between novel chapters

Mandy Webster

I struggle to set up each new chapter in my novel. I want to jump right into the dialog and action and keep the story moving along. While writing the first installment of Valley of the Bees, I did just that. I wrote the story in the throes of momentum and didn’t slow down for anything as uninteresting as setting up my chapters properly. When all was said and done, my story came out to around 25,000 words and was in desperate need of transitional material between chapters. Imagine how I felt when I realized that I was going to have to sit down and write all of that boring stuff at once.

back to basics - writing with the five senses

Lesson learned. Continue reading “Writing the boring: How to write transitional material between novel chapters” →

Novel Writing, Writers on Writing

Setting goals and reaching them late… one way or another

Mandy Webster

I always plan to write over winter break, but somehow it never happens. I work at a University that closes for almost two whole weeks the end of December. Perfect time to get some writing done, right? Apparently not!

So then January came along, and I buckled in and started writing regularly. I have been scheduling it into my day, but not giving myself too much grief if I occasionally get off track. And I must say, it has been going pretty well for me. I am writing at least three days a week (while working a full-time job and single-momming two rowdy boys in the process) and hacking out the first draft of book two of my Valley of the Bees series a few pages (and sometimes a few sentences) at a time.

My goal was 20,000 words by the end of January. Of course, that didn’t happen, but I did get close. And today – three days into February – I ALMOST made it finally. Of course, I typed the final word of the chapter I was working on, looked down at my word count, and saw this:

19,999 words toward my 20,000 word goal. Seriously?
19,999 words toward my 20,000 word goal. Seriously?

Of course! I was one word shy of my goal! Seriously? Continue reading “Setting goals and reaching them late… one way or another” →

Novel Writing, Writers on Writing

Learning a bit more and getting a bit better each day

Mandy Webster

Basic writing
Basic writing (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Yesterday, I blogged about how I have used outlines to help me write the first two books in my upcoming Valley of the Bees trilogy. Today, I would like to talk a bit about what I am doing different while writing book II.

As I mentioned yesterday, I wrote book I, With Envy Stung, in a rush. I pushed myself to write a chapter each and every day over a 16-day period. This left me with some extremely light chapters. There was no set-up or transitions for any of these chapters. Instead, I just jumped right into the action and/or dialog and got right to it. Continue reading “Learning a bit more and getting a bit better each day” →