How to Find the Right Place for Your Inciting Incident

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Struggling to find where your story truly begins? Learn how to pinpoint the perfect place for your inciting incident.

The inciting incident (sometimes called the inciting event) is one of the most critical moments in any novel. It’s the point where something changes—where the protagonist's normal world is disrupted and the core story begins. It kicks off the central conflict and gives readers a reason to keep turning pages.

But unlike major plot points like the midpoint or climax, the inciting incident doesn’t have a fixed place in a story’s structure, which can cause confusion—especially for newer writers.

You’ll find articles that say it should be on page one. Others claim it belongs at the 10% mark. Some swear by chapter three. And the truth is...they're all right, depending on the novel.

3 Easy Edits for Better Emotional Descriptions

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

The wrong words can flatten the right feelings—learn how to spot them and breathe emotion back into your scenes.

Ever read a scene that should hit you right in the feels, but somehow doesn’t? The words are there, the setup is solid, but emotionally, it falls flat. 

That disconnect often comes down to the wrong word in the right place. A frown where there should be fear. A smile that doesn’t carry the weight of what’s unspoken. 

The smallest word choices can make or break a reader’s emotional connection—and when that connection breaks, so does their investment in the story.

The right word can mean the difference between connecting emotionally with a reader and having them forget a character’s name. The more they connect, the more likely it is that they’ll love the story. The more they love the story, the more likely they are to tell all their friends about it and buy the next one. 

The Revision Ripple Effect

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Tiny tweaks in a story can cause a tidal wave of changes.

Maybe I’m a writing freak, but I actually love revisions. A single change can impact a novel on multiple levels, which is both cool, and terrifying.

Tweak a character’s backstory or change the rules of your world’s magic, and bam! Your entire novel starts to shift under your feet. One change leads to another, and another, and then you realize the larger ramifications of all those changes and before you know it, it’s practically a new book.

Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but you want to make sure it’s what you want.

Some rippled-revisions are massive, while others are more nuanced.

The Key to Creating Suspense Is...

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Suspense matters in all novels, not just the thrillers and the horror stories.

The most memorable experience I've had with suspense and storytelling, was watching the final episode for season one of "Why Women Kill." Despite the name, the show is a drama, not a documentary, and is brilliantly told through three sets of characters, in three time periods, all in the same house. All you know going in is that one of the women in each time period is going to kill. You don't know who, you don't why, and you don't know how.

The final episode where all is revealed is sheer genius.  

I literally sat on the edge of my seat, knees pulled to my chest, hand over my mouth. I was riveted. 

The Rule of Three and How it Helps Our Writing

By Janice Hardy 

Three is a magic number in writing, and can help you craft stronger stories.

There was a joke in my house growing up, that things always happened in threes—good luck, bad luck, it didn't matter. If the car broke down, that meant two other things were sure to break within a few weeks. Someone got a raise, well, then two more good things were certainly on the way.

Most of the time it did actually happen—but probably not for the reasons you'd think. Good and bad things happen all the time, but we don't always notice them or make the connection to other similar events. It’s part of our culture and so ingrained in our subconscious that we notice (if not seek out) patterns that fit this rule. 

3 Common Mistakes Writers Make with Conflict

By Janice Hardy

Conflict has caused more than its fair share of writer frustrations.

Like many writers, I’ve spent countless hours creating conflict in my novels. I’ve thrown exciting obstacles in my protagonists’ paths, I’ve developed sinister antagonists to thwart my heroes, I’ve devised cruel ways to put my characters through mental anguish—and my beta readers still told me, “This scene needs more conflict.”

Because what we “know” about conflict is often wrong.

It’s not about the obstacles in the path, or the bad guy with the evil plan, or the mental anguish of the hero. It’s not the plot or the character arc, even though we often talk about it like it is (me included).

The Pros and Cons of Having an Alpha Reader

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy 

Do you really want feedback on those first draft pages? 

At this stage in my career, both my crit groups are "first draft, in-progress" groups. They read the pages right after I write them, and sometimes, those pages are a hot mess. 

These gals are my alpha readers, giving me thoughts on rough novels I dump right from my head onto the page. Bad pages. Messy pages. Pages that don’t always make sense. It's a tough job, but they're worth their weight in chocolate for the invaluable feedback they provide me.

The merits of beta readers (people who read and offer feedback on a writers’ manuscript) are widely known, but having alpha readers, folks you trust read brand new pages, can be equally valuable.

That Sounds Familiar: Cut Often-Used Words in Your Writing

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

It takes a lot of work to write well, and sometimes we go for what's easiest instead of what's original. 

During the drafting stage of a manuscript, some phrases and combinations of words tend to roll off our fingers and into our stories because they're easy. These phrases aren’t clichés, per se, but they’ve been used so often by enough writers that they carry the same feeling as a cliché when readers read them.

• Beamed a smile
• Cacophony of sound
• Shrugged a shoulder
• Hair flowed down her back
• Any kind of glow from any kind of light
• Releasing a breath you didn't realize you were holding

They also tend to sound “right” to us, and that's the problem. 

We automatically use them without thinking, and that robs us of the chance to write something unique to our voice and style.

What's the Best Way to Tell (and Write) a Story?

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Storytelling is more than just well-written prose.

No matter what anyone tells you, there is no "right way to write." It’s a process that varies from writer to writer and even book to book. What works for one writer doesn't always work for another, and might even squash their ability to write at all.

Which really stinks if you’re just starting out and looking for the right path to take, or you’ve been struggling to develop your storytelling style and nothing seems to fit you. 

It's a pain for all of us, really, because even if we do have a process that works for us, there’s always that one story idea that doesn’t fit with how we usually write.

If any of this sounds familiar to you, take heart that you are not alone.

Nope, Not Buying It: How Do We Maintain Believability in Our Writing?

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

You don't want your readers to think, "Yeah, right, that'll never happen."

My brother-in-law is a nurse, and he can't watch medical TV shows. It annoys the snot of out him how wrong so many of the details are. My husband is the same way with anything computer related, and I notice the screw-ups in publishing and graphic design. Odds are you have your own area of expertise, and you notice when a show, movie, or book gets it wrong.

The number of authors who goofed by putting a safety on a Glock is pretty high. And readers catch those goofs. 

All stories in all genres get bonked on the head when they lack credibility. Readers don’t believe a character would act a certain way, or they doubt a situation would ever happen, they find details that are flat-out wrong, or they call BS about how something is handled. 

Once you blow your credibility with a reader, it’s really hard to earn back their trust.