Iris Applewood is a cozy romance and mystery author crafting worlds of wonder from her home in Southern Indiana. She loves blending the boundaries between the mundane and the magical. In her free time, Iris enjoys experimenting in the kitchen, creating dishes and perfumes that feel like potions.
When she’s not mixing spices or spinning stories, she treasures her sleep, where she often dreams up her next big idea. Through her writing, Iris hopes to add a touch of enchantment to everyday life, inspiring readers to find magic in the most unexpected places—even in their own backyards.
It takes a rich and diverse mind to excel at both math and writing poetry, and author Angela Chaidez Vincent has just that sort of mind. I was lucky enough to share a table with her at the Louisville Book Festival this year where I learned that she is also a really fun person to hang out with!
Arena Glow author Chaidez Vincent’s background is in mechanical engineering, mathematics, and instrumental music performance. Her work is infused with numerical winks and a collagist impulse that seeks to join vigorous dreaming with the subterranean and overlooked. She has an MFA in Poetry and keeps her tech side smiling by teaching precalculus and computer science. Angela resides in Fresno, California with her wife, Lisa.
Q: How did publishing your first book change your process of writing?
A: There was such relief (and a fair amount of amazement) in knowing that I can actually see a major literary undertaking through to completion! I feel much more confident in my ability to do it again.
Christina Wallace is an author of Middle-Grade, YA, & Romance novels. She has been a lifelong writer, but didn’t enter the world of publishing until 2023. Wallace grew up in a military family and has lived in many places. During her own time in the U.S. Navy, she was deployed to Afghanistan and the Philippines, where she met her husband, who was stationed with another unit. Even during her Navy career, she worked tirelessly on her writing.
The idea for Wallace’s novel, The Light Keeper, first appeared during NaNoWriMo 2017, and from there, it was developed into a novel and eventually grew into a series.
Now, Christina enjoys sharing her stories far and wide, while also inspiring children to explore their creative side and to follow their dreams. She lives in Florida with her husband, two children, a dog, and a cat.
Q: When did you first catch the writing bug? What drove you to persist?
A: I began writing obsessively when I was in Middle School, about 22 years ago! I’d always had a very active imagination, my friends and I role-played our favorite shows all of the time. In the middle of 7th grade we moved and I didn’t make friends easily. So, I poured myself into writing. The characters I wrote all had tight friend groups, and it made me feel less lonely. The more I wrote, the more I knew sharing stories was what I was made to do.
Akil O. Smith is a Florida-based writer of sci-fi, poetry, and drama. He is the author of ALAM Beginnings, an award-winning science fiction novel set in the mid-80s.
ALAM Beginnings is the story of a young boy who has already weathered unimaginable loss as he wrestles with the sudden return of his mother, previously believed dead but now alive under mysterious circumstances. It is set in the far reaches of the Andromeda galaxy where a relentless conflict rages between the ruthless Rigions and the courageous Zorians. Get your copy today!
Q: When did you first catch the writing bug? What drove you to persist? A: I think the verdict is still out to say I’ve caught the writing bug. Mainly because I do have stories I feel will work better as film and all. However, all praise goes to my mom as I had dreams of the characters I am writing now. Tiyshio, Shawn, Nighcos were all people who showed up in my dreams and ever since I told her about those dreams, and her telling me to put it in a journal I have only continued to do such even so now. With any projects that come to mind.
Join me this Friday and Saturday, November 1st and 2nd at the Village Square Mall in Effingham, Illinois for the Midwest Holiday Market! If you have book nerds on your holiday shopping list, then you HAVE to stop by my booth and check out my books and other bookish gift ideas.
The 2024 Midwest Market Holiday Show takes place this Friday and Saturday, November 1-2 at the Village Square Mall!
Dr. Joel Anthony Hamilton is the author of the Mud Crab Kingdom series, which is set in a world where “being mud-skinned is worse than murder, and being “different” is worse than being mud-skinned.”
A novel synopsis is a summary of the plot, characters, and themes of a novel. It typically provides an overview of the story without going into too much detail. A good novel synopsis should give the reader a sense of what the book is about, including the main conflict or challenge facing the characters, the setting, and any important themes or ideas explored in the story. It should be concise and engaging and should ideally make the reader want to read the book to find out more.
Aria plays the mystical instrument she discovered hidden deep within an ancient forest. Image generated using artificial intelligence.
The novel synopsis may also be used as a marketing tool to promote your book to potential readers, agents, or publishers. However, I also find it useful to write a first draft of a synopsis as part of the novel planning process.
Writing Sample
The following is a synopsis of a novel that we’ll call The Songbird’s Echo[1]which uses the Hero’s Journey story structure to move the story forward. Notice how the single sentences used in some of the previous outlines we explored have now been expanded to a couple of sentences for each section of the story’s structure. With each new assignment you complete in the planning process, you will come a little bit closer to having written your first draft!
If you’ve been following my blog the past couple of weeks, you’ve probably learned a lot about novel structure and how to outline an idea as part of the planning stage of the novel writing process. You may be wondering, what now, brown cow? Well, I hope you have a lot of notes and ideas at the ready because it is finally time to outline your novel!
Image generated using artificial intelligence.
By now, I hope you have settled on one or a couple of story structure outlines that will meet the needs of your novel or novels. I say, “or novels” because at this point, you may still have a couple of ideas that you are hashing out. While you may be tempted to narrow your focus to just one at this point, I say keep working on all those ideas for now, at least until a clear forerunner emerges. Just make sure you settle on one novel to draft at a time. Right now, you still have plenty of time to consider which novel you want to write first. For now, let’s jump into our next writing assignment.
Writing Assignment #3: Outline your novel
Outlining a novel is a personal process, and there is no one “right” way to do it. However, here are some general steps you can take to outline your novel:
The Larry Brooks story structure is one that I have used several times and find to be very useful when planning a novel. It is a structure that I will detail here in depth because – to me – it seems to be one of the more effective methods of outlining a novel.
Image generated using artificial intelligence.
Brooks is a writing coach, author, and speaker known for his expertise in the craft of storytelling. He is the author of several books on writing, including Story Engineering: Mastering the 6 Core Competencies of Successful Writing; Story Physics: Harnessing the Underlying Forces of Storytelling; and Great Stories Don’t Write Themselves: Criteria-Driven Strategies for More Effective Fiction. Brooks is also the founder of Storyfix.com, a website dedicated to helping writers develop their storytelling skills. Brooks’ approach to writing emphasizes the importance of structure, character development, and genre expectations. He believes that successful stories must meet certain criteria, and that writers who understand these criteria can create stories that are more engaging, satisfying, and marketable.
ANNOUNCEMENT: ISO guest bloggers to write posts for each of the story structures listed below. Please scroll to the bottom of this post for details.
Kurt Vonnegut, the acclaimed American author known for his satirical and anti-war writings, was critical of the traditional, linear approach that dominates much of literature and popular culture. He preferred a more experimental, non-linear approach that allowed for more creativity and surprise. In a lecture on the shapes of stories, Vonnegut suggested that stories could be graphed on a simple chart, with the y-axis representing the level of happiness or unhappiness experienced by the protagonist, and the x-axis representing the progression of the story over time.
Vonnegut also identified several basic story structures that he believed were common to most stories. These structures are based on the emotional journey of the protagonist and the overall shape of the plot. Following are some examples of a few of the simple shapes of story structures identified by Vonnegut:
Write on the World 