First Draft Pro

I find that dialogue speeds up pace of the story, and description slows it down. Since I gravitate towards a plot that moves forward at a rapid clip, I lean on dialogue a lot. But, that means I need to get dialogue right. It this week's newsletter, we dive into four exercises for strong dialogue writing skills: 1. Use dialogue as a tool for fast drafting 2. Train your ear on a dialogue style you love 3. Remove dialogue tags to develop stronger character voice 4. Worldbuilding through dialogue 🔗 https://lnkd.in/e3SJrP6M

What does data science tell us about emotional arcs in stories? In a research study from 2016, a team of data scientists at the University of Adelaide took 1327 classic novels from Project Gutenberg and plotted the emotional arcs of each story. But, what happens when we combine that research with the lessons shared by Kurt Vonnegut in his seminal 2004 lecture on the shapes of story? If you consider both the work of Vonnegut and UoA alongside each other, there’s really 10 emotional arcs, and they seem to be defined by the following factors: ✅ All stories start with either a positive, neutral or negative emotional valence. ✅ All stories end on either a positive or negative emotional valence (never neutral). ✅ The emotional arc of the story either rises or falls after the story starts. ✅ There are anywhere from 1 to 7 changes in emotional valence over the course of the story. ✅ Each successive change is bigger than the one before it. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eQ9mpFxP

One of our favourite things to do is build user requested features (ie: the features in this release)! We love learning more about everyone else’s processes and preferences, and finding ways to make your writing practice a little easier. If you’re a short story writer, are feeling iffy about AI, or you really love the tactile feel of paper when you’re working on a story outline — this release is for you! 🔗 https://lnkd.in/enVsr88Q

On TikTok, there are a combined 473.3K posts with romantasy tags. On Instagram the number of tagged posts is nearly double at 797K. In the last 6 months alone searches for "Romantasy" have tripled (check out the Google Trends chart in the linked article). And, last year was the first year that Goodreads added Romantasy as a stand-alone category in the annual Goodreads Choice awards. If you’re a citizen of the internet and a reader, it’s likely that at some point you’ve fallen down the BookTok rabbit hole and emerged in Romantasy wonderland. But, how to write one? We've combined two classic novel structures to create a 45 chapter (90,000w) Romantasy Novel Template.

Storytelling is just as important for non-fiction as it is for fiction — which means even non-fiction writers need writing tools that help you figure out the structure, pacing, and connective-story-tissue bits of your book project. Enter First Draft Pro, stage left 😉 1. Non-fiction settings tailor your experience to suit your project's structure. 2. Collaboration features make it possible for you to work with ghostwriters, book coaches, co-authors, and editors (and share a single source of truth). 3. You can manage arguments, references/footnotes, and your chapter by chapter outline We ❤️ non-fiction and fiction writers equally!

Some updates to First Draft Pro's writing app (woo!) → Comments are faster and easier to navigate → You can see wordcounts on scenes in the manuscript (or sections if you’re writing non-fiction) → We fixed some bugs and made a few UX tweaks → We changed the limits on our free plan → An update on the mobile app If you're a writer and you give the app a try, let us know what you think!

Hark! A Newsletter! This week we're talking about compelling characters, our go-to character template, and how to use the notes section in First Draft Pro for character profiles. Want a sneak peek? There are 5 things you can do to make your readers root for your messy, complicated anti-heroes: ⭐ Make them the best at what they do ⭐ Make them funny ⭐ Make them sympathetic ⭐ Show them to be driven and ambitious ⭐ Show them to be selfless -- Join 6400+ writers who subscribe to our storytelling newsletter: https://buff.ly/3VH2JC3

Stories are about feeling. That's what you're really doing when you write a story: you're designing an emotional experience for your reader, you're trying to make them *feel*. Perhaps that's why we love this advice from author and musician Stephen Nachmanovitch so much: "The depths are obscured in us when we try to force feelings; we clarify them by giving them adequate time and space and letting them come." Here's his advice for getting unstuck creatively →

In the words of Diderot: “Distraction arises from an excellent quality of the understanding, which allows the ideas to strike against, or reawaken one another. It is the opposite of that stupor of attention, which merely rests on, or recycles, the same idea.” Isn't it lovely to think of distraction as creatively productive? Getting distracted is, after all, just being interested. We notice things, we pay attention. Which is to say: we're writers. But, sometimes you *do* need to summon the illusive magic of focus. This week's newsletter is a round up of our favourite First Draft Pro features for creating a focused and distraction free writing practice.

Last week we compiled a list of our all-time favourite books on writing well and crafting incredible stories. If you love writing craft books as much as we do, you’d recognise many of our picks, which include Lisa Cron’s Story Genius, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird and perennial favourites from Stephen King, Margaret Atwood, and Ursula La Guin. But as we worked through the list, we began thinking: what are the less obvious picks? This weeks newsletter includes three books that you wouldn't immediately think of as incredible resources for writers (but which totally are).