It’s the Ides of March—beware! It’s about to be St. Patty’s Day—rejoice! (But don’t drive afterwards.) Some big news about Google Reader, in case you hadn’t heard, along with our usual supply of Great Stuff.

CRAFT

I’ll let you in on a secret. When Lisa Cron (@lisacron) asks, Does Your Protagonist Have Amnesia?, she’s really asking about you, not your hero(ine). Why? Because, she says, that character’s past is her prologue, what leads to the change she needs to make over the course of the story. If you’ve forgotten to develop the critical details of that past (and not the 1,000-question list of irrelevant details some writing teachers advocate), you won’t know the how and why of the past that makes that change critical...

A while back several members of my critique group, the Cochise Writers’ Group, and I came up with a list of questions we could and should ask ourselves as we were reading each other’s work. We’ve shared it with other people but why keep the good stuff to ourselves?

So, without further ado, here’s an introduction to critique, “technique,” and “procedure.”

Read books, magazines, blogs, web sites, you-name-it on writing and you’ll be inundated, absolutely overwhelmed, with tips, tricks, hints, suggestions, ideas, and more on how to write everything from a poem to the Great American Novel, how to overcome writer’s block, how to ...

Whoa! Is today a double, or even triple, unlucky day: 3-13-13? Not a bit! In fact, it’s your lucky day with the Great Stuff that’s waiting for you below, including news of a major shift in Random House’s proposed ebook contracts and 11 steps to creating a good looking CreateSpace POD book.

CRAFT

Keith Cronin (@KeithCronin) advocates a learning technique that a writer friend of mine swears by: Be a Copycat. Note that that’s copycat, NOT plagiarist. The idea is simple: by copying—word-for-word—particular passages—the opening scene, a chapter, the climax, whatever—of the work of an author whose work you admire and respect, you will gain insights into how they did what they did that you never would have simply by reading the same work...

Whew! All caught up. Had a good weekend at the Tucson Festival of Books, but leaving the house before 6:15 in the morning and not getting back until late that night doesn’t leave much time for reading blogs or writing about them. No matter: we’re back on schedule.

CRAFT

“Motivation-reaction units.” Sounds like parts from a rocket engine, doesn’t it? Katie Weiland (@KMWeiland) says no, that phrase is just another way of describing the cause-and-effect sequence that defines each event in a story. The cause is some kind of outside stimulus. The effect is the reaction—well, three reactions, actually: feeling and/or thought, physical action, speech...

Happy Friday, everyone. The Tucson Festival of Books is this weekend and I’m psyched. This is always a great event. Maybe I’ll see you there. Meanwhile, there’s a big kerfuffle afoot over some new ebook contracts from Random House. See below for much more on that, plus other, far less controversial Great Stuff.

CRAFT

Jordan Dane (@JordanDane) offers terrific advice in 8 Key Ways to Edit Suspense & Pace into Your Finished Manuscript. If that title isn’t enough to make you want to go read it, I’ll tease a few of her suggestions: figure out if you’ve started at the best point; is the setting the right one; does the protagonist’s “black moment” occur at the best possible place? Valuable stuff here.

Rachelle Gardner (@RachelleGardner) injects a moment of sanity in what other m...

I hope you’re enjoying Great Stuff’s new home. I had a bit of a scare with it on Friday (web site launches are always a bit fraught anyway, so I shouldn’t have been surprised) but all ended well. There’s still more to do with the site but at least we’re up and running.

Today’s Great Stuff is full to overflowing, so I won’t hold you up any longer. Dive in!

CRAFT

You might not think that writing and lawyering have much in common (we’ll not get all snarky here), but lawyer and published novelist Tara Conklin (@TEConklin) makes the case for the commonalities—or case-preparation techniques—you can use to write more effectively in Write Like a Lawyer: 5 Tips for Fiction Writers. A few examples: create a timeline, interrogate your characters, and use only persuasive facts.

Jam...

Okay… deep breath and here we go. Click the Publish button aaaaand…

Welcome to the renamed and relocated Great Stuff for Writers! I hope you like the new web site and the new-ish layout. The one thing that hasn’t changed is the content: I’m still surfing the blogosphere for important and valuable information for you, my fellow writers.

If you were subscribed to the old Great Stuff from the Cochise Writers blog, I’m afraid you’ll have to resubscribe, but the links are over on the right in the sidebar. You can (re)subscribe by RSS or e-mail, or both! Of course, you can also bookmark the site or mark it as a favorite too.

This new web site is still a work in progress, so if you have any problems with it, PLEASE tell me about them...