What Matters More? Story Execution or the Idea?

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

The age-old quandary--is a well-written novel novel better than a great idea?

Idea or execution. Two directions many writers struggle with. Should they write the technically perfect book and not worry about the idea, or find the perfect story and not worry about the writing?

The reality is that each takes precedence at different points of a writer's career. Sometimes you'll want to worry about the technical aspects of writing, and later, the storytelling is what matters more. By the end of your path, both become vital for success.

But you don't have to hit that end goal first, and focusing on the wrong aspect at the wrong time can even hurt you. I've seen plenty of first-time writers worry so much over finding the perfect idea that it keeps them from writing at all. I've also seen many long-term writers who were so sure of their ideas that they didn't bother to edit after a first draft.

Both types of writers struggled much more than than needed to.

For those of you heading down the writing path and wondering which matters more--idea or execution--consider where you are on your journey before you decide where to put your creative energy.

The Difference Between Critique Partners and Beta Readers

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Critique partners and beta readers have similar jobs, but they’re not the same thing.

January is a common month to start revisions and the search for critique partners and beta readers, and my various social media feeds are always filled with comments and thoughts related to both.

This year, I received a direct question from a reader about the difference between a critique and a beta read—and the people who do them.

Like so many other writing terms, these are often used interchangeably, but have slightly different meanings.

How to Write When the Last Thing You Want to Do is Write

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Writing is an activity that requires of a lot of brainpower. We tap into our intellect, or emotions, or sense of empathy, and draw from within to create a story. When life throws us a curve and sends all our brainpower in one “this sucks” direction, writing screeches to a halt.

Last week was a bad week for me. It started out great with the last days of a fantastic conference in Alabama, seeing old friends and making some new ones, then a lot of bad news crashed down on me at once. Just trying to write a post for today was difficult, and I stared at my list of topic ideas knowing I wasn’t going to be able to write a single one.

Hence, this post.

Life gets hard for lots of folks every day, and there’s a good chance many of you are having a rough time right now, too. I’m on deadlines, I have things I need to do, so curling into a ball and ignoring the world for a week or two isn’t an option. It’s even less of an option for writers with kids and jobs and many more obligations than I have.

If You Want to Succeed, Define What Success Means to You

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

I’d guess most writers want to be successful, but there’s no single measurement for what success is for a writer. “Making it” doesn’t exist, because there’s always the next step, the next book, the next task.

I’ve been thinking about success a lot the last few months. Although I’ve published my own non-fiction since 2014, my fiction was traditionally published by a Big Five publisher (Balzer+Bray/Harper Collins), and I’m about to launch my first indie novel. I’ve published on both sides of the spectrum, and have what many writers would consider a successful career.

Why You Shouldn’t Write Every Day

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Last week, I jotted down the idea for this article about four hours before Jami Gold’s post on not writing every day appeared in my email. Obviously there was something in the air last week that made us both think about this particular piece of advice. I have a slightly different angle on this topic, but if you struggle with this, pop on over and read her thoughts after you’re done here.

As you can probably guess from the title, I’m not a write-every-day-writer. I’ve done it, and I’ll do it again when I’m on deadline or doing NaNoWriMo, but never taking a writing break turns writing into a chore for me. I need time off, and I need to walk away from the keyboard and have some fun.

Can You Be a Writeaholic?

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

As you might imagine, I know a lot of writers—from those just starting to write all the way up to those with dozens of published books. Even though every writer is different in their own way, there are similarities and common ground regardless of career level.

One such area, is writing too much.

If you’re aghast at that statement, wondering how in the world someone could write too much, you might just be one of those writers.

4 Ways to Survive Rejection as a Writer

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

It takes a lot of courage to write, and even more to send our writing out into the world. Writers face rejection on a daily basis, no matter what stage of their careers they’re at. When we’re starting out, we worry no one will like our stories. Then we worry our writing isn’t good enough. Later, we worry we’ll never get an agent, or an editor, or a publishing deal. And finally, we worry reviewers and readers won’t like our novels (it comes full circle, really).

At the core of all these worries, is the fear that we aren’t good enough.

6 Ways Netflix Can Make You a Better Writer

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

It might seem odd to watch TV to improve your writing, but Netflix* is a fantastic tool for writers. Not only does it give us a way to escape when we need a break, but it allows us to see complex stories unfold in a way that easy to study them. Binge watching packs a lot of storytelling examples into a weekend.

Even better, since much of the original programing has only ten to twelve episodes a season, they’re written more like a novel than a TV show. Netflix expects viewers to binge, so a series often plays out as one long movie, not a series of loosely connected episodes. And for most people, it’s less time consuming to watch ten episodes than to read ten novels—and much easier to return to a scene you want to study further, or pause the show to take notes.

A Less Lonely Way to Get More Writing Done

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

In today’s crazy-busy world, we rarely have enough time to do all the writing we want to do—especially if we’re fitting it in around family, life, and work. Even if our process is working well for us, there are bound to be times when our motivation fails and sitting to the keyboard is the last thing we want to do.

I was chatting with some writer friends about this several months ago, and we all were facing a similar lack of motivation. Our reasons varied—recent move, new baby, switch from traditional publishing to self publishing, life going haywire in general—but all of us were having some trouble doing the writer things we knew we needed to do.

So we made a pact.

Write What They Don’t Know: Manipulating Your Reader for Better Plots

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy


When you think about it, writers are quite manipulative. We craft situations designed to cause different emotions in our readers. We want them to worry, to care, to laugh, to cry. The more we play with their emotions, the better our stories can be. And that includes a little harmless manipulation.

Just because we know what happens in a scene, doesn’t mean we can’t fake out our readers and make them think something else might happen.

Say we have a scene where the heroine is cutting through a dark, scary park on her way home. Plot says she’ll make it home fine and there’s a big surprise waiting for her. Her long lost (and much hated) father is home from prison. But let’s also say there’s a girl missing at school. It hasn’t been made a big deal yet in the story, but it’s there, and readers have it in the backs of their minds. We might:

Getting Your Novel to the Finish Line: Resisting the Shiny New Idea (Part Three)

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

So far in this series we've talked about getting past getting stuck and staying focused enough to write. Today, we'll look at a very common distraction when your WIP gets tough. The Shiny New Idea.

The Shiny New Idea is a tempting creature, frequently appearing when we’re stuck on or bored with our current work in progress. For whatever reason, something new becomes extremely appealing. Since we’re still working on a story, it feels like we’re being productive, until we step back and realized we’ve written the beginnings to seven novels and haven’t finished a darn thing.

This type of distraction is typically due to either a discipline issue or a plotting issue. Either we don’t have enough discipline to stay at our keyboards and work, or we don’t know enough about the story to actually finish it (for new writers, sometimes we just don’t know enough about writing a novel yet to know what we need to do or what we need to ask to move forward).

Getting Your Novel to the Finish Line: Staying Focused Enough to Write (Part Two)

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Last week we talked about ways to get unstuck and finally finish a novel. Today, we’ll shift to maintaining our focus and some common reasons why that novel just isn’t getting written. On Wednesday, we’ll look at dealing with the oh-so-distracting Shiny New Idea (and that will wrap up this three-part series on getting your novel to the finishing line).

Staying focused is harder than being stuck, because there’s little anyone can do to make us write if we don’t feel like it. We have to find the discipline to stick with a project and keep writing, and no one else can do that for us. They can offer advice and suggest things to try, but in the end, it’s up to the individual writer to make it work.

Marky Marketing: Promoting Your Book

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy


When I sold my first novel back in 2008, I knew I’d have to do some marketing to help promote it, but like many debut authors, I had no clue what I’d need to do. A website certainly, probably a blog, some kind of social network like Facebook or MySpace (yes, MySpace). Beyond that? I had no idea.

Jump ahead eight years, and authors doing their own promotion is expected, if not required. It's even more critical for indie published authors or those with smaller presses. The publishing business had changed and what worked a few years ago is less effective, or even a waste of time now. Even more annoying--what works changes almost on a monthly basis, for as soon as a good idea appears, everyone jumps on the bandwagon to copy it.

Here are a few basic things every writer needs:

Balancing Writing and Working Without Losing Your Mind

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Writing is one of those things we can do at home in our spare time, so it’s a flexible pursuit that fits into our schedules. Unfortunately, it’s also a pursuit that takes a lot of time and energy to do, so it’s common that the little time we have to spare is the time when we least feel like writing.

The key to balancing work and writing is easy. Make writing a priority and then actually write.

It’s the implementation that’s hard.

Unpredictable...That's What You Are: Keeping Plots Fresh

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

I've talked about being unpredictable for the reader before, but sometimes the story can be unpredictable for the writer too. Even though I outline heavily, my writing process lends itself to a certain amount of spontaneity, which makes it easy for my characters to surprise me. I follow my story outline, but I also give my characters enough freedom to do what they have to do when they have to do it. This often leads to events I never expected. Usually good things, though not always. (Then the delete key comes in real handy)

The Trouble With Reactive Protagonists

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

A reactive protagonist is a common reason for rejected manuscripts, and a common problem in premise novels—the novel explores a concept and shows “things happening,” yet there’s no real person with a problem. When a protagonist is reactive, they’re just someone who has “things happen” to them. The protagonist isn’t driving the plot, but only reacting to things that almost randomly happen.

Reactive protagonists are troublesome because they’re often a red flag that the story problem or core conflict isn’t personal enough to the character. If the problem mattered, then the protagonist would have reasons to act to resolve that problem. They can also indicate that a story that lacks narrative drive and feels aimless, or worse—pointless.

Three Fun Literary Devices to Make Your Prose Sing

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

I'm a huge fan of Aaron Sorkin, who writes some of the best dialogue in the business. If you’re a fan of The West Wing, you’ve seen a particular trio of literary devices used in almost every speech President Bartlett gives. Heck, you’ve heard these in almost every speech anyone has ever given.

Anaphora, epistrophe, and symploce.

What are they? (besides loads of fun):

Be Flexible When Plotting (and Writing) Your Novel

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy


There's an event in my novel, Darkfall, that's key to the whole story. It's something the entire series builds toward, and it cranks up the stakes and starts a (hopefully) white-knuckle thrill to the end of the book. However, when writing the novel, I had no idea where this event was going to occur.

I knew from my outline that it would happen, and I had several places where I thought it could happen, but the story kept evolving and I wasn’t sure where this pivotal event was going to go or how I was going to do it.

The More the Merrier: Adding Words to Your Novel

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Before I dive in, here's a heads up that I'm visiting Writers in the Storm today to chat about a fun way to get you out of a writing rut. Come on over and say hello!


We spend a lot of time talking about what to cut from our manuscripts, but there are times when we really do need to add words. Even if a novel is the right size for the intended market and genre, we might feel the story just needs deepening to make it stronger. Here are some common reasons to add words to a manuscript.

5 Tips for Plotting a Mystery

By Pamela Fagan Hutchins, @PamelotH

Part of the How They Do It Series

JH: No matter what genre you write in, there's going to be a "mystery." Maybe not the traditional whodunnit type, but there will be questions posed and information hidden and reasons for readers to keep reader to learn the answers. So it makes sense that non-mystery writers can learn a few plotting tricks from those who write mysteries. Pamela Fagan Hutchins visits the lecture hall to day to share a few of those tips.

Pamela Fagan Hutchins writes award-winning and bestselling romantic mysteries and hilarious nonfiction, chairs the board of the Houston Writers Guild, and dabbles in employment law and human resources investigations from time to time. She is passionate about great writing, smart authorpreneurship, and her two household hunks, husband Eric and one-eyed Boston terrier Petey. She blogs on writing, publishing and promotion at Skip the Jack and on her beleaguered family She also leaps medium-tall buildings in a single bound (if she gets a good running start), and much-too-personal life at Road to Joy. Check out her latest romantic mystery, Going for Kona, available now, everywhere.

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Take it away Pamela...