By DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills Deadlines tend to have a bad reputation among writers. Editors require writers to submit contracted work on a specific day. Let me re-phrase that: Editors require creative, out of the box thinkers to submit a writing protect on a specific date. Not a week or months…

by Bethany Jett, @BetJett Welcome to the third and final post in our series 11 Ways to Create a Sense of Place. Be sure to catch Part One and Part Two if you’ve missed them. Without further ado, it’s quite fitting at this time of year that we start with……

by Bethany Jett, @BetJett Welcome back to Part Two of our series 11 Ways to Create a Sense of Place. If you missed the opener to this series where we mentioned 1. Food, 2. Dialect, and 3. Conducting Research, be sure to check out Part One here. We’ll continue our eleven…

by Bethany Jett, @BetJett I host a weekly online show called Writers Chat and yesterday's topic was how to create setting in our stories. The tips were so great I had to share with our Blue Ridge community. Creating great scenes is not only for fiction writers. Whether you're writing…

By DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills Welcome to Part II of SOS - Settings on Steroids. A character who lives in the setting will not make the same observations as a visitor. A seasoned character's emtions are different from a novice in a specific environment. The seven universal emotions, according to Tonya…

By DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills Ah, setting, the frail stepchild of fiction. How often we neglect this vital member of story, insisting character, plot, dialogue, and emotion are much more important. We dress her in rags, have her clean the chimney, then criticize her for lack of beauty. Setting is the…